


redrawing the constellations

by parareve



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: (and also soft. but shh. no one is supposed to know that part), /clicks on an intercom, Alternate Universe, Ambiguous endings, Bartender - Freeform, Blood Drinking, Civil War, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, EMOTIONAL WHUUUMP, Family Feels, Fanzine Submission, Ficlets and drabbles, Flirting, Gift Giving, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Infinity Arc, Language Sharing, Lord help this man, Modern AU, Multi, Mutual Healing, Nihon Country, Poetry, Post-Series, Prompt Fic, Rating Varies By Chapter, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Resettled Suwa, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Second person POV, Self Care, Shopping, Smoking, Tags to be added, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Vamprisim, War-related violence, accidental footsy, all kinds of tension, all kinds of tension: part 2, also flowery words about kurogane being generally violent and terrifying, and has a thing for seeing fai in his clothes, bartender kurogane, can they remember they love each other for 2 mins, fai being a disaster: yet again, fai does not like winter, fai is more than happy to tease him about this until he spontaneously combusts, fai wrestling with depression and other typical canon self-disdain, flowery words about fai and magic and mysterious mystery things, gratuitous descriptions of kurogane and fai achieving mythic status in the local lore, gratuitous dragon/phoenix imagery, hi yes, husbands caring for each other: episode 108, i see a theme, kendappa and sakura having great-great-great grandchildren who still adore these men, kuro and fai being disgustingly sweet with each other, kurogane - Freeform, kurogane and fai as spirits, kurogane being his hardass self and gently helping him out of it, kurogane is very in love, kurogane with cigarettes was an aesthetic i was not prepared for, kurogane won't admit he's in love, language teaching, let fai and yuui be happy, may i repeat, me writing yet another scene centered on rain, medievaly ramblings about this mess of a slow burn?, mental health, mentions of shinto history and folklore, musician fai, personification of death as a mildly sentient and not altogether negative being, post-Yama, prose, r!fai making yet another surprise appearance, resettled suwa owns me at this point i literally have nothing to say, romantics in the rain, sign me the hell up, talks of life over coffee and tea, the biceps making those DRINKS be STILL my THRIST hhhOOH boy, vague references to allegiances and rebellions, vintage vibes, we all know how infinity went but like
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 19,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parareve/pseuds/parareve
Summary: A little scrapbook of stories. Here you’ll find promptfics, AUs, what-if’s, personal spin-offs, and a whole host of other things I’ve scribbled down when my mind fancies.
Relationships: Fay D. Fluorite/Kurogane
Comments: 16
Kudos: 51





	1. table of contents.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been slowly building an archive of ficlets on my tumblr and my collective notes apps, and figured it was about time to dust them off and create one space for them. The title pulls from the poem _The Ships of Theseus_ by Steve Gehrke, one of my personal favorites, which I recently rediscovered while cleaning out my desk. Felt like a fitting way to start a new project.
> 
> These are a hodgepodge of stories: some building from my own personal headcannons and AUs, others taken from askbox prompts, and some written just for the hell of it. A handful build off of each other, but most stand on their own. Many can fit wherever your heart desires. I’ve cherished writing every piece in here, and I hope you find something you love in this lil’ oddball collection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For ease of navigation, I've grouped entries into the following categories. All chapter ratings are G-T unless otherwise stated.

**TRC/TWC Timeline**

_[3\. but in the rain, you're beautiful](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/53130661#workskin) _\- [Early TRC]

_[5\. deemed and delivered](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/53147431#workskin) _\- [Infinity, Rating: High T/M]

[_8\. speak my words, so I may speak yours_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/53191447#workskin) \- [Nihon/Post-Series, Rating: High T]

[_12\. loading the gun_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/67719388#workskin) \- [Piffle]

**Alternate Universe**

_[2\. it fucks with your honor, and it teases your head](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/53124028) \- _[Resettled Suwa AU]

[_4\. lending softer ears to my lungs_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/53132320#workskin)\- [Brothers AU]

_[10\. sunrays in the shadow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/57210205#workskin) _\- [Resettled Suwa AU]

[_11\. whisky from a bottle of wine_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/62212483#workskin)\- [Bartender/Musician AU]

[_13\. to have, and to hold_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/70208862#workskin)\- [Spirits AU]

**Poetry & Prose**

[_6\. phoenixfire and spellwork_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/53162866#workskin)

_[7\. dragonblood and lionheart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/53162923#workskin)_

_[9\. wings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/55982944#workskin)_


	2. it fucks with your honor, and it teases your head.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, “Fai comforting Kuro, or Kuro making something as a gift for Fai,” for my sweet buddy Ani. This is loosely set in my resettled Suwa AU.

On the third night of their rebuilding, Fai wakes alone. The sheets are still warm, no matter, the folds of their cotton bunched beneath his palms in a twisted tide, same as they had been when sleep had finally swept over him—but the heat of another’s back is gone, and the ties of their canvas left unbound, and the air that kisses upon the wrinkle of his nose comes with the chill of a sun yet risen.

He shifts from his burrow slowly; scrubs his eyes, ties the folds of his robe closer. Beneath the heavy lay of a woolen coverlet, he bows beneath their tent’s lapels to stare aimless through the dark. Fall paints the hills in ashes of black-blue, dawn yet to be welcomed—her warmth sits on the fringes of the eastern mountains in a violet haze, distant and pale beyond the horizon—and left in the western dusk, Fai pulls his wools further about his shoulders and walks on.

He passes a samurai keeping watch on their manor’s hillside, her eyes kind for all they are battle-hardened. The beams of a home yet to be complete stretch beyond the curve of her shoulders, strokes of coal that blur menacing and strange in the dark. “Fai-sama,” she murmurs, “Do you need something?”

He smiles thinly, breath fogging white before him. “I don’t know how you’ve warmed, up here,” he chuckles, then pauses; corrects, “Stayed warm? Are warm?” with accent a strange jumble on his tongue. He sighs, his brows jolting high in exasperation. The girl laughs brightly, and he with her. “I’m trying! It’s not—not _easy_ , you know.”

“You’re quick,” she reassures, smile crooking in a way that warms him from heart to toe. “You’ll get it.” Her eyes turn away, the shadows of the valley beyond caught within her watch once more. The chirp of crickets fills the silence between them, dried ginkgo rustling quiet at her feet. “I grew up in the North,” she says, after a long moment, the only mention of home he had heard from her. “I’m used to the cold.”

He smiles again, soft in its bittersweetness. “It’s the same, for me.” He tilts his head, his hair unbound where it falls in frazzled lines of white-blue about his shoulder. “Yasu, right?”

She eyes him oddly, as most of their newly-hired hands had when he had made quiet efforts to know them by name. “Yes.”

A rabbit skitters through the leaves, its pelt shining white as a crescent moon; with nostalgia aching in his lungs, Fai remembers firelit nights between walls of rice paper and stories of a god in the sky who crafted faces from mochi. It’s enough, small a thing as it is, to remind him. “Have you seen Kuro-sama?”

Yasu glances towards the lower hills, flowing in a whistling slope of rice fields to end at the mouth of the river that separates valley from forest edge. Fai nods, wishing her well with a quiet whisper of thanks, and pads barefooted through the gravel to start the slow climb down. He sees nothing at first, only the sway of grasses that gather dew at their points like a brush beads ink, their touch cool on his skin—through the trees whisper a song of faefolk and midnight moons, a shiver carried down his spine by the cold and the silence both—and at the valley’s foothills, steps wobbling over the stones of the river’s edge, he turns; feels a warmth on the base of his neck no amount of worlds travelled could strip from him. It’s hard to see his lover through the dark, but sight is hardly needed—the bloodbond between them strings tight, and the tense of his lungs falls soft, and the smile at his mouth comes slow where he crosses the short distance towards the curling branches of an ancient maple whose leaves falls in a crimson snow. At the base of its trunk sits a shadow with auburn eyes, moonlight caught within them through the branches, and the man to who they belong raises one dark brow, turns a sharp cheek away; clears his throat, shifts his fingers. Fai stoops to the space beside him easily.

“You left me alone, Kuro-sama,” he murmurs, a ghost of the theatrics so often present, but even still, Kurogane’s mouth twitches. He rasps his fingers over his thumb, blinks a little. Fai props his chin on his knees, shifting his toes in the soil. “Another bad dream?”

Dark lashes flick towards him, then down. Kurogane nods. Fai _hm’s_ , then folds his arms between his chest and his knees, peering down with absent interest at the leaves scattered around them. Bloody eyes skitter over to stare where one hand reaches out, pale against the dim light, to arrange them into an odd patchwork, deepest to lightest. “If you see it like this,” mulls Fai, tilting his head; another leaf crinkles between his fingers, yellowish-brown, that he places at one far end, “It’s almost a painting, isn’t it?” Another, vibrant from stem to point, is laid at the bottom. “Like a…big red cat, with a bright, spiky tail—oh! And eyes—” Two beads of soil are laid in the middle of the palest leaves. Kurogane snorts. “—and…! Um, um—and—?”

It’s with some fumbling that Fai raises a handful of roots, held neatly to his cheeks with an expectant blink; Kurogane’s mouth twitches again, a further curl at one side. “ _Hi-ge_ ,” he mutters.

“ _Whiskers_ ,” Fai parrots, laying the roots down delicately, none the wiser to the smudges left behind on his skin. “There—Mr. Maple Cat. We need to come up for a story for him, _ne_?”

The man beside him scoffs again, voice rolling soft for all its grit. “Always damn cats, with you.”

“They are _amazing_ , excuse you—”

“They’re a _pain_.”

Fai huffs, quite indignantly. “Fine! I’ll start, since you _refuse_ to—Mr. Maple Cat is…the protector of the river. He walks the fields only during the full moon and is married to the autumnal god—and every year they have a great big feast, where the forest spirits dance, and the mountain gods sing, and the people make plum mochi in their honor.”

The curl at Kurogane’s mouth deepens. “Plum,” he repeats, dully. “Should be matcha.”

“Not everything has to be _matcha_ ,” Fai huffs, flopping back off his heels to turn into the curve of Kurogane’s arm. His lover scoffs again.

“Y’just don’t like it.”

“It’s _bitter_!”

“S’ _good_.”

“Well _I_ don’t have taste, apparently.” Fai tilts his chin over Kurogane’s shoulder, smiling coyly at the glare turned his way, then glancing down at the fiddle of dark fingers. He turns his head further, puzzling a little; puffs out a breath over his silks. “Are you weaving something?”

Dark brows twitch and long lashes lower, quiet falling sudden between them. Kurogane hesitates, then—and Fai has to wonder, even close as he is, if the color that blooms sudden upon those cheeks is imagined—but he clears his throat, unfurls his palm, baring a plait of grasses that nearly runs the width of it. It’s not unknown to Fai that his lover fiddles—worse than even himself, sometimes—but the realization of why falls slowly, the unspoken explanation not needed to be understood, and he smiles simply; shifts one hand to brush the scarring of his fingertip over it.

“In the palace, we used to have women weave baskets from wicker,” he says. “They would sell them after every mass, in the morning market. It always interested me—all these…twists, and little…lines, like that.” He laughs softly. “I wouldn’t have the patience.”

Kurogane toys with the plait’s ends, rasping together another knot where pale fingers hover to trace slow over his knuckles. He shivers, swallows a little. “Not always about patience.” His brows twitch and his head tilts, a stripe of raven hair freed to slip over his temple. “S’easy to get lost in it. Same way with holding a sword.” Another knot is tied, the line of his fingers rippling slow beneath the lay of Fai’s palm—one set warm with blood and bone, the other cool with wire and steel; synthetic and real both, the skin of each traced by scarred thumb, curling fingertips. “Just…lets you get out of your head, for a minute.”

Fai leans into the curve of his shoulder. The lay of that weight is returned, just enough, a subtle shift. “I’ve always liked watching your hands work,” he whispers, muffled through the press of warm silk. He lifts his head up; rests it back down, cheek to collar. “You leave this…spark behind; everything you touch, it flows with it.”

Kurogane ties another knot, the flush of color in his cheeks rising higher. “Don’t you start with that poetic crap.”

“I will pull out _every_ single scroll of aesthetics from your drawers,” Fai gasps, hand clapping sudden to his lover’s arm, “and then we’ll see how much you _hate_ poetry, Kuro-hypocrite.”

Red stains sharpened ears in a sudden flare. “Shut up.” Kurogane weaves two more knots, and then two more, and then the plait spans the length of forefinger to thumb and then some, rasped into a smooth line between his hands.

“All done?” Fai hums, curling his knees closer against the chill. Kurogane _hn’s_. “You could let the river take it away. A little fisher girl might find a pretty gift, in the morning. Or, you know. A poor salmon might choke on it, and that might be the salmon the fisher girl’s father catches, and the cook it’s brought to may cut up his pretty filets to find a very strange sign inside that all the salmons are cursed, and the whole village will never eat fish again for fear of turning to grass monsters—”

Kurogane laughs aloud at that, the sound sudden and barking through the stillness. “Shut up,” he huffs again; shakes his head, grins a little. He grumbles a curse and nothing else, for a moment. His shoulders shift and his fingers fiddle again. “Let me see your hand.”

“Ah! Is Kuro-sama going to confess his undying love to me?” Fai grins brightly through another slew of curses, laying his palm open above his lover’s thigh. “It’s here, it’s here, don’t complain!”

Bloody eyes glare firm to him again, and Fai arches his brows high, smiling with all the impish innocence he can manage as Kurogane looks back down, grumbles still; makes gentle effort to draw the plait out and tie it slow over his wrist, it’s tails falling long for all the thinness of his bones. Fai leans closer to tilt his hand through the dark, the moonlight caught within the gleam of its strands, silvered and bright. “A protection charm?” he wonders, turning his fingers to twist gently through the callouses of Kurogane’s own. 

“Somethin’ like that.”

In silence, they watch over the river for some time—golden hair caught messily on silken shoulder, and knees bunched beneath the heat of Kurogane’s arm, and bare toes curling through the folds of his kimono—and, gradually, it is Fai who stirs, dawn’s glow a gentle thing where it peeks over the hills beyond in a wash of lavender and rose. “I say we scrap together as much sleep as we can before the carpenters come along again,” he says, stretching the kinks from his back with a mewling sigh. “Get all the blankets we can, scare off all the bushi from calling us awake—what do you say, Kuro-chi?”

The man before him just huffs again. Slowly, he presses to his feet; rolls out the tension in his shoulders, pads quiet around the leaves laid between them. Fai holds out his hand, smile a bright thing for all its tiredness. The fingers that curl through his own are roughened as they are warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title here comes from [Blood Bank](https://open.spotify.com/track/7qUoDTmVj07qUf6ZBDhWKl), which I had on repeat while reediting this. The lyrics really stuck with me, for some reason: knowing that love can be a messy, vibrant constant through the flaws that life gives you; a spark to move forward together, even to an end unknown, and that being all the reason to twist tighter together.


	3. but in the rain, you're beautiful.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, “Kurogane struggling with his feelings for Fai; he knows he likes him and/or he’s falling in love with him, but he doesn’t know how to feel or react about it.”

“Oh, _do_ stop your grumbling—they’ll be out soon.”

The mage had said the same before, some time ago, not long after those gangly brats had decided to abandon them for the nearby glow of a bakery window. Kurogane had scoffed then, too. “M’not gonna sit around in a damn _monsoon_ just for them to find some new alley to stick their nose in.” He shifts his shoes over the slick of wet cobbles, hoisting his umbrella higher above them both. “Fucking ‘pastries’ my ass. That manjuu got them lost on purpose.”

“The rain’s not _terrible_ ,” Fai mulls, knocking the paper bag in his fingers lightly into his knee, one corner and then the other. The leather of his shoes was getting soaked, and the tapered camel of his slacks speckling beneath the knees. “I quite like it, actually.”

Kurogane quirks one brow at him, pressing another huff through his teeth. “We’re gonna be a couple of drowned rats, by the time they find us.”

“ _Well_ —it’s not like we have to just stand here—”

“Oh, you wanna just—take a stroll, through the flood, _sure_ —”

“It’s not a _flood_ , Kuro-sama—”

“It’s _pouring_!” Their umbrella shakes viciously against the jerk of Kurogane’s palm, raindrops scattering into a bright circle at their feet. “Y’need me to whip out a dictionary for you, to spell out what that means?”

Fai’s head falls back, a sudden roll of theatrics. “Gods _above_ , I can’t handle you,” he sighs, a laugh barked out short and soft—and before Kurogane can get out another word, the idiot’s walking off through the puddles, ducking beneath the shivering branches of the street’s tree-lined center. “I’m _going_ , whether you come with me or not—and I don’t mind being a drowned rat, though if you _leave_ me, it would be quite rude, you know; and you’ll be left alone, no doubt, for another hour or so— _oh_ , I bet there’s a little café nearby, with warm scones, and a nice, hot cup of coffee—you do like coffee, don’t you, Kuro-pon?”

It takes half a second for Kurogane to gather his wits. By then, he’s already sloshing off after him. “Hate it,” he growls back, reflexively. He slips sudden on the stones; bites out a short curse where he scrambles to catch his footing, pulled back to safety by a hand that bleeds warmth through his sleeve, strong for all it is lean. The mage’s snorts on a laugh, free palm clapping wet to his mouth. “Shut up.”

“That’s the thanks I get, for saving you from cracking your skull?” Fai gapes, and tears his hand away, nose stuck high. “Big _brute_.”

“Call me that again, and I’ll bash your head in,” Kurogane seethes, yanking his umbrella back above them. Water sloshes sudden upon their crowns and pitters across their shoulders, startling and cold, his body stumbling rigid all over again. Fai’s snorting dissolves into a bright cackle. “Shut— _shut up_!”

Hardly another word can be passed between them, after that, Kurogane burning red to his ears and Fai’s half-bitten chortling wringing him breathless by the end of it. Through the gloom, they walk on—puddles slopping beneath their heels, the rain caught in glistening streaks over the toes of their shoes and gleaming in the golden hair that halos into wet ringlets against every streetlight they pass—and, eventually, they do find a café, it’s window a beckoning warmth against the gray. Fai, _ooh_ -ing and _ahh_ -ing already, sprints instantly beneath the striped awning to turn eyes blue as a summer sky over his shoulder, and Kurogane—

Well. Kurogane grumbles under his breath, and viciously shakes out his umbrella, and doesn’t say no.

A golden bell chimes delicate above their ears when they walk in. Kurogane wrinkles his nose at the scent of sugar and coffee beans, smoldering thick on his tongue through the heat of steamed presses and frothed lattes and warming ovens that chases through sorely chilled skin. Fai runs to a booth by the window, taking a seat easily with paper bag crinkling half-soaked beside him, and he looks up only to whisper, “Come _on_ , silly—you look like you’re about to start a war with the cash register.” Kurogane’s shoes squeak on the tile to hold himself back from breaking something.

He sits, awkwardly. The table’s too small, and the light too dim, and the menus that glint by the windowsill too glossy, and the mage is—

The mage is tucking one soaked strand of gold behind his ear, and scrubbing thinly at his lashes, and peering down to check that the contents of their morning’s grocery run hadn’t been ruined entirely. Light beads on his skin and catches on his lips, glistening off the furrow of his brow, that lithe voice low and frazzled in its self-murmuring. It takes a moment for Kurogane to realize he’s staring. He jerks his eyes away, words caught in his throat; runs his own hand over his cheeks, to clear the sheen of rainwater from them, then palms back his fringe, musses his fingers through his hair. He can feel eyes on him, for a long moment, their warmth putting a shiver down his skin. He tries to ignore it—tries not to think about it—but then Fai is giggling, and he is glowering. “What?”

“Kuro-sama looks like a big wet dog,” the idiot lilts, swiping the menu sudden from the table to hide his blossoming grin. Kurogane can feel his skin stinging again.

“I told’ja to _quit it_ with that dog crap—“

“Oh, look, they have tea!” Quite suddenly there is a menu in his face, his brow wrinkling through a puzzled _Eh?_ “Oh, and so many desserts—you have to pick something, Kuro-woof, I simply can’t manage.”

He plucks corner of the thing numbly from those fingers, drops it in a dull smack back to the tabletop. “I’m not picking shit.” 

“You like green tea, don’t you?” A waiter has leaned over them, and Kurogane bumbles into silence, puzzling over the mage’s sudden onslaught of fretting. “Oh, lord, there’s so many—um, aha, I’m sorry…I’ll just, um—I’ll have a coffee—black—and ah—oh, and a jasmine tea!” He’s given a smile like the sun, and he returns it, a sigh coming relieved once their waiter has clipped away again. He slumps sudden into the cushions, voice hissing through its dramatics. “I _hate_ making decisions.”

Kurogane’s brow twitches, a curl at his mouth. “Black coffee,” he deadpans. “Thought you’d have that drowning in cream, or whatever.”

The look the mage fixes him with is wholly offended. “Oh, no no _no_ —I like my coffee _very_ strong, thank you. Anything less is an insult to the craft; if I ever were to open a café—and I _will_ , mind you; I am _determined_ to, someday—it will be known for all the sweets I can get my hands on and the best coffee to wash it down.” Kurogane, distantly, can feel his brows climbing into his hairline. “Nevermind that I probably will have to pay an arm and a leg for the _machinery_ ,” Fai prattles on, sighing dismally into one unmannerly bent knee, heel squeaking on the lacquer. “Never understood the mechanics of that stuff.”

The snort leaves Kurogane’s throat before he can stop it, eyes quick to jerk down.

“What?” Fai huffs, glaring quick to him. “You think I can’t do it? Oh, I will prove you _wrong_ , mister—”

Kurogane laughs then, sudden and low, its burr echoing off the glass into a rolling purl of a thing. The mage falters to silence, blinking wide eyes upon him. “Fucking hell—do you _ever_ shut up?”

A smile blooms at Fai’s mouth, odd where it wrinkles. Kurogane tries not to look at it too long. He doesn’t have much time to, anyway—two cups are set on the table before them, both curling white with steam, Fai making some show of gasping before reaching over for a ceramic dish of sugar crystal to spoon neatly into his own, one shaken thing, and then two. Absently, Kurogane pokes at his tea bag, bobbing it slow.

“You don’t laugh,” Fai whispers, after a long moment. He stirs slow circles through his coffee, half-minded clinks against ceramic that leave bloody eyes frozen, yanked up to stare strangely at him. “At least, not like that. It might be the first time I’ve ever heard you do it.” That smile comes back on his face—a little crooked, on one side; a little warmer than usual.

“What—you sayin’ I got an ugly laugh, or something?” Kurogane grumbles, looking sharp out the window when he catches a flash of blue out of the corner of his eye.

“You—didn’t you hear _mine_?” Fai’s hand jerks high to muffle a scattered heave of a breath. “Gods—”

“Your laugh ain’t ugly.”

“Oh, you think so?” When Fai looks at him again, Kurogane flounders a little; jerks his eyes down to his tea, raises them slowly back to peek at a color deep as ocean tides and pale as celestine. “Who knew the big brute was shy _and_ sweet.”

“What did I _just say_ —”

“I know, I _know_ —we are in a public place, Kuro-sama; don’t start a murder spree over little old me. Just can’t handle myself, sometimes.” Fai takes a sip of his coffee, humming pleasant through its steam. Kurogane forgets to look away, for a moment. The lack of fringe over those fair temples looks naked and strange, and he almost has to stop himself from reaching out to fix it. His fingers twitch, nonetheless.

He doesn’t notice when the mage swallows, the part of that mouth hovering still over his cup where those lithe palms cradle it close, pressed firm to stay warm against the chill; doesn’t notice when blue eyes skitter over his own, raising to where he feels one wet strand of his hair fall heavy to his brow bone, then lingering somewhere by his cheek. Fai smiles a little, cheeks pink; untangles one hand to poke at the tabletop. “Um.” White teeth crest over a pink lip. Kurogane’s brain short-circuits. “Well, we’ll probably…find the kids at some point—or they’ll find us, more likely, I’m sure, but, um…” Fai raises his brows a little; tilts his head, clears his throat. Kurogane almost leaps out of his skin when a fingertip raises to brush his own, roughened with scar tissue. “Hello? Earth to Kuro-sama?”

He wrenches his hand away, painfully aware of the burn in his cheeks. “Huh?”

Fai laughs, though in the small space between them, it comes out a lot more like a wheeze. He rests his cheek against the rim of his cup, eyes sweeping quick from dark arm to the flee of bloody eyes. “You got lost a bit there, Kuro-woof. Not falling for me, are you?”

Kurogane almost hits the table, quick as his knee jerks; it whacks into Fai’s own, instead, twisting the mage’s coy grin into a blubber of _Ow!_ , and Kurogane slurps down a fourth of his tea with a growl of _Serves you right, you little shit_ , before making a point of bumping his knee firm, again. The idiot takes that as an invitation for playing footsy—which it, absolutely, was _not_ ; a fact made known loudly and with a misplaced kick that leaves the table rattling and his foot screaming and Fai burying a breathless laugh into his knuckles. It’s somewhere around then that a tapping comes on the window, startling them both harsh enough to almost spill their drinks; they’re left gawking at Syaoran, his mouth twisting with an apologetic wave beneath a mountain of carefully held bags.

By the time the kids have clambered in, also soaking wet, to squeeze into the tiny booth alongside them—a fresh round of coffees and teas ordered, and a platter of sweets to go with them all—Mokona has made a nest of Kurogane’s hair, and the princess has blurted a _Sorry!_ for knocking her elbow into his for the third time, and the kid has turned their table into a wreck of a display counter to ramble off praise for a vintage collection of postage stamps the lot of them had discovered.

Beneath the table, Fai’s knee bumps light into Kurogane’s own, the point of his shoe shuffling through the squeeze for leg room to brush ankle-to-ankle. It’s accidental, perhaps—something that pulls his heel tapping, blue eyes darting up through lashes that gleam fair as starlight—but Kurogane does nothing of it, says nothing of it; forces down another swallow of tea, studying the lamplight of the city street that crafts raindrops to snowfall. Sakura taps him on his shoulder, a quiet plea for permission to show off her own recent purchases, and only somewhat begrudgingly, he huffs; shifts his arms, drinks in her beaming grin with the tension in his brow softening.

The mage has that smile again, caught out of the corner of his eye. Kurogane tries to ignore the way it puts a twist beneath his ribs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /puts the Hercules soundtrack on blast


	4. lending softer ears to my lungs.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a world ravaged by civil war, memories of the lost live on in more ways than one.

It’s not long after they have slipped beneath the sensors of this city’s gossip-cloaked underground to hunt for an archive of quantum physics, and interdimensional travel, and a great many other things no one but the kid can even glance at without having their brains melt out of their ears, that the sirens go off.

Beneath the sickly flood of fluorescent light that coats their skin with a tealish hue, Kurogane wrestles Syaoran forward by the lapels of his coat; hisses _Go!_ in a growl that echoes like thunder through the dark, alabaster walls flaring bright with enough magic to make Fai’s head swim. The kid runs, Mokona with him, turning back only to shout, “I’ll find you!” between the scraping pound of his heels.

There’s too much to untangle, no matter the routine of laying their lives on the line, time and time again, for any chance to bring this child hope after so much has long been lost from him—and so when Kurogane tugs him close by the elbow, dips his head to catch his eyes through the piercing glare of the light, it’s all Fai can do to still his breath against the blare of sirens sharp enough to needle through his skin.

“Get to the surface,” breathes Kurogane harshly, metal fingers a firm thing where they curl through the wrinkles of his sleeve. “I’ll find whatever I can down here before I get out. If somethin’ happens—”

“I’ll come back for you,” Fai says, and then surges closer; crushes their mouths together with as much gentleness as he can spare. (He has to tell himself it won’t be their last—still, the thought eats at him.) Adrenaline sears through Kurogane’s blood, pounds into Fai’s heart, leaves an ache in his teeth. He tastes _eager_. He is rarely afraid. “Don’t be reckless,” Fai whispers then, caught between parting lips like glass waiting to shatter. His hands linger on Kurogane’s collar; trace soft down his chest.

His lover grins, a sharp curl at one side. “Can’t make promises.”

His warmth is stolen away with the turn of his heel, his palm’s heat a fluid tear from his sleeve, and Kurogane is gone. Fai, legs quivering, cannot hide the bitter curl of his smile; can do nothing but follow in the painful stretch of opposing directions across this foreign world, praying to whatever gods above that their strange little family will emerge from the other side hand-in-hand, as they always have.

Light flickers through his lashes in a neon haze, spluttering electric and raw through the piercing wails that rattle within his skull, needling and nauseous. He runs—back the way they came, past glass-walled rooms and monitors frozen with the sparking hiss of his magic; up two flights of twisting stairs, through a door that swings clear off its hinges—into the foyer of what was once a station of some sort, or so they had presumed, given the rusted tracks that carved through the tiles. Over them, he runs still, heels clacking against metal and stone both; sees a flash of blue in the corner of his eye, dread a cold wash that bleeds sudden within his veins, heating with the tension that comes before a fight.

Metal clicks and snaps, shoulder mounts wrestled free (he’s heard the jingle of rounds loaded before, tasted the coppery blend of a bullet tearing past his ears)—and without a second thought, the vampire awakens; slows time enough to leave breath thick on his tongue, paints his eyes gold and his nails sharpened where they bite into his palms, ready to run, ready to _kill_ —

The shot never comes, however—never even has the chance to _aim_ —for suddenly there are fingers snared in his collar, and then stone against his back, and what was once a glass cathedral in ruins has blurred to paint-chipped brick and the dim flicker of lamplight, too dark to even gather his footing.

“You’re safe,” a voice says, sharp as ice. Fai stares down at the points of his claws; draws them quick into his skin, breath shallow through the quiet. “We’re behind a barrier; the Riders can’t get in.”

“Magic and metal bullets,” Fai huffs, half in awe, half disdained. “What the _hell_ kind of world is this?”

The voice laughs, brighter now. “Welcome to Xercia.” Through the shadows, Fai squints; falls still as stone at the man dressed in black and blue before him, half-lit beneath the flames. He meets him almost bone for bone, if not for the muscle that thickens fair skin and the pearlish stripes of battle scars he would know better on his lover’s body than his own; still, the dark mars the man before him only just—for blue eyes blink sudden upon him, and golden brows furrow sharp, and a mouth Fai has spent enough years of his inhumanly long life studying in thin glass (forcing curve upon curve upon) drops open into a stillness that mirrors the visceral shock of realization within his own.

“You’re…you’re not from this world, are you?” whispers the man, and it’s all Fai can do to stay on his feet before a girl not much older than Syaoran comes clattering from the dark, silver hair twisted into a tight plait down her neck.

“Fai! Oruha ordered us to move to Phase II—the Riders are closing in the Southern Gate, and the Fifth Unit is surrounded—“

“The Third Unit still controls the West Bridge. We cut them off at the water, and we have them—their spells are useless outside the transmutation.” Blue eyes fix sharp back to where Fai gapes still, breath forced in its slowness. “We’ll get you to the surface, but from there, you’re on your own. Might need your magic to help us fight our way up, though—you have a name, don’t you?”

The sound tastes like vinegar on his tongue. He swallows it down, the first time; forces it out, the second. “Yuui.”

The man’s eyes widen, barely seen through the firelight, something splitting thinly through the twitch of his mouth—and for all Fai’s heart aches, for all the questions that hang in a nauseous weight on his bones, there is no _time_ —and it’s only with a moment’s pause that he nods, turns his shoulder. “Don’t fall behind,” he says, and takes off after the girl. Fai follows them, steady as he can.

Through the station’s inner walls they weave, measured steps through the dark, the lamp’s flame a guiding gleam to them all. “You’re part of that group, aren’t you?” the man mutters, somewhere through their fourth turn down another hidden footpath. “The ones looking for the Bjorna? I thought your clothes looked familiar.”

Fai finds his voice gradually. “You know of us?”

A wry look is turned over a black shoulder. “The Riders entered a search warrant for you two days ago; didn’t take long for you to pop up on our radar, especially after that big guy knocked out the Colonel—we were able to recapture some lost territory, thanks to him.” The man chuckles. “I could use a few men like that, really.”

“He’s not one to hand over control lightly,” Fai muses, and can’t resist a knowing smile, something twisting beneath his breast. (It’s odd, the reassurance that aches within him, that this man would earn his lover’s trust and devotion as deeply as their Hime long had—much the same as himself.)

“Those are the only ones worth their weight,” the man says, and continues on; tears a handgun from his hip’s holster, long before Fai can blink, the moment they round a corner to find their stairway to salvation. Sunlight bleeds through the cracks of the surface hatch, a glimmering stripe of white. “We may get lucky; we may be caught in the crossfire.” The sharp ring of a cartridge cocked snaps through the stillness. “Yuu, you ready?” The girl with them nods quickly, baring her own gun. “Yuui?”

Fai swallows. “Let’s go.”

The hatch spills open to blinding light, deafening with the onslaught of civil war that their group had taken some effort to avoid in their seven days trapped here (as much as they could, at least, before their foreignness had been interrogated and their safety threatened; by then, Kurogane had taken matters into his own hands, authority be damned). The chaos is worse than any fleeting glimpses of news holograms had given them, and for comparison’s sake to Fai’s own experience with open attack, they are lucky, but only enough. Yuu fires down three snipers from the corners of sanded roofs, a bullet missing Fai’s temple by the reflexes of his blood alone, his magic sparking all the further. With a whistle through sharpened teeth, there is a dome, violet-hued and electric, around them, a shield strong enough to make a run for the city’s west wall—and led by the man, they do. Through the torn streets, stray bullets and attack charms spill from their cover like water from feathers.

The sun bears down blistering, and by the time they reach the gate—its territory cloaked by a protection charm that tastes like the dew that lingers after midnight rain—Fai can feel sweat beading thick down his neck, and fear coiling violent in his stomach, any sight of the others lost from him; but through the arches of gleaming sandstone, the blur of a nearby oasis trembles, half-hidden beneath the hunch of one hooded child that raises suddenly, eyes blown wide, to shout out his name. The shadow before him pushes quick to his feet, something metal and massive toted upon one shoulder, and Fai’s heart lurches with relief, tension gathered still within the stiffness of his heels—but the bloody gleam of his lover’s eyes is a clear thing even through the heat, Syaoran tearing down the linen of his cover to wave frantic to the runes that gleam beneath.

“I have to go,” Fai gasps, “I have to—thank you, if there’s any way I could ever—” A gloved hand raises firmly, blue eyes fixing bright to his own. It’s not enough time to say anything his heart aches to; still, Fai tries. “I know,” he continues, “I know it’s only coincidence, but…” The words catch in his throat, despite himself; stings heat in his eyes, leaves his fingers twitching. His brow furrows, and his smile wrinkles, an odd, pitiful thing. “I just—”

“He died during an enemy raid, four months ago,” the man before him murmurs, and the ache in his eyes is one Fai longed to never relive. His own smile is a thin thing, half-formed. “You look just like him.” He swallows slowly, smiles warmer. “It gives me hope, that in a different world—a different life, even—we will be together again.”

There’s nothing Fai can say to that, nothing more to put such similar longing into his own words; one tear escapes, and then another, and the nod of his head comes faint enough to go near-unnoticed when the man steps closer, curls one strong arm around his shoulder to pull him tight. It’s nothing of the body Fai remembers—too broad, and too hardened, and too aged—but the soul that sings beneath the quivering lay of his hands strips all time away from him, feeling only the coarse warmth of black sheep’s wool and the squeeze of a thin hand in his own.

“I will win this war,” the man says, “and I will have the Bjorna by the end—and when you return here, you will be welcomed; so help me, I will make sure of it.”

Fai almost laughs, when he pulls away. The sound is too choked to come cleanly. “You always were the stubborn one.”

A roughened hand cups his jaw, tilts his head; brushes the tears from his cheek and the hair from his temple in one stroke. “And you were my light; my firebird,” he whispers. Against a weathered face, those eyes deepen with a wisdom Fai had always known (had always _missed_ ), something in the crackling lines of his heart forcing him to believe in every word, for the only reason that he _must_. “May I see you again, brother, if the gods are kind.” That heavy hand falls to Fai’s shoulder, a firm squeeze. “Go.”

Dazed, and bleary-eyed still, Fai smiles weakly, and does. The sand stings with midday heat against his ankles, hisses about the wetness of his cheeks—and within the blurred wash of Mokona’s magic, surging tight about his limbs to beckon him closer, he moves straight into the arms that part for him, the heavy weight of a salvaged raygun falling discarded at their feet. Kurogane cords one hand through his hair; squeezes his palm soft about the bow of his nape, cradles the turn of his shoulder. The rumble of his voice tangles through the warped tide, but Fai presses closer none the less; finds solace in the vibrations that chase through warm skin to block out all else.

He feels the sting of blue eyes on his skin, long after the transmutation’s pull has enclosed them all. He does not look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I first heard [The Mortal Boy King](https://open.spotify.com/track/6CKMWO6cSJ6P1C0t6z60QO), I immediately associated it with Fai/Yuui. I've always had a soft spot for the potential of there being another Fai in another world; one who has also lost his brother and is just as similarly fighting to live on; and one who, through our Fai, is able to see his brother revived, and vice versa. /shakes my fists at helplessly at CLAMP. These two deserve _happiness_ , goddammit.


	5. deemed and delivered.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, “Kurofai whump/filthy whump.” A push-pull of fighting for distance, but craving closeness, as newly-turned vampire and prey. Slight NSFW.

Plastic bags in hand and the lapels of their coats tugged high, they duck beneath the awning of their ground floor take-away, the downpour a dull gleam against the slick of their boots.

Fai palms back his fringe, pulls in a breath that tastes of stale cigarettes and soiled concrete (acidic and nauseating on his tongue, too foreign and too _familiar—_ too much like Tokyo); watches with lethargy in his lungs and gold on the fringes of a single eye where Kurogane wrestles with the lock, only briefly. He nudges the door open to give way to the must of their stairway’s sparse-lit foyer, pressing out a huff as he does (the man loathes storms like these much as he loathes most anything, now; this world had offered little pleasantries in their some four months here—too empty, no matter the crowds; too sunless, and too cold—and while Fai had adapted to the bleakness of the city center’s crumbling walls quick enough, the same couldn’t be said for _him_ ).

Water splatters to the floorboards from rough-shaken leather, the stair creaking beneath his weight. Wearily, Fai sends the door rattling shut behind them; follows in the puddled shadows of footsteps that bloom over fraying carpet like spilt ink. It’s a five-flight climb to their apartment, a dingy thing they had narrowly bartered for beneath fluorescent lights that hissed yellow-green and the scratch of their names on a contract that built currency from bloodshed (and even beneath the squeeze of his lashes, Fai sees red stained on black marble; tastes copper on his tongue and heat beneath his skin, a pulse drumming in his chest that is not his own, and he wants, he _wants_ —)

Kurogane stops in front of the scuffed gray of their door, water trailing slow into the curve of his wrist. He thumbs through their keys, metal slipping on wet skin (lockers and money safes and back entrances and underground rooms, too many to count that tie them to this strange mafia, a life sold to the shadows), and Fai stares a little; feels his mouth run dry where he follows the paths of water that bead into the creases of oil-slicked leather, glisten over strong shoulders and ripple down the curve of that broad back (scars beneath, like talons of lightning carved into that skin—and for one dreadful moment, he wonders how closely the gleam of those dripping paths would match them). The thought makes him jolt, head cut down to stare firmly into the space left between them; if Kurogane notices (he _does_ , he always does), it is only shown in a flick of dark lashes and fingers turned still.

Key slots in and lock chips free, and the door is shouldered open, a sharp squeak on rusted hinges. Gradually, Fai finds his bearing; follows the man before him into the flicker of white light that leaves his head splitting.

(It’s too much, all of this: the emptiness he himself has demanded, a separation carved through his own selfish avoidance—for as much as his gut twists at the sight of hands that carried him back to life from a death so viciously latched upon, his heart shatters just as equally, helpless beneath a longing to _remember_.)

It’s not desire that stills his lungs—though the simmer of it hides, buried, nonetheless; an ache to feel those rough palms tracing the shiver of his ribs, hushing down his thighs to squeeze a slow brand around his flank (coiling into his hair, hot breath against his teeth—and the sound of that voice, gods, the _sound_ )—it’s something else entirely: a shiver of sensation that worms into his fingers, blooms into his eye where gold swallows blue and pain sings on his tongue. He swallows it down, as he always does; grinds sharp points into his palms deep enough to wound (for he can’t, he _can’t_ , but he needs—)

Kurogane pulls off his jacket, ignoring or unaware (he is neither, but he has just as equally succumbed to the routine; has only put in the fight where he knows he will win—and that, too, has faded), and Fai blinks; looks to where raven hair flicks wetly about the back of his neck, hanging upon that sharp brow in a way too soft for those rugged features. A shiver brushes down the ninja’s skin, a reaction increasingly caught when no sight of the kids or the bun remain (all out now, as they had been earlier, left to their own errands to flee from four walls too commonly stifling), and Fai cannot resist the curiosity—cannot help but fall to the whisper of predator beneath his bones, taste the heat of prey that washes over his tongue.

(He _needs_ —)

“You can just _ask_ ,” Kurogane says, bluntly, and quiet as the words come, the coolness of them _stings_ ; Fai rips himself away from the swallow of that dark throat, stares helplessly into bloody eyes that stare forward still, a firm glare where his fingers shift away from dripping leather, coiled slight over its hemming. “I told you before,” he continues, and it’s then that he turns, Fai’s limbs flinching still as stone, “you can have it.”

The heat of those eyes (too patient too wanting too much too _much_ ) makes Fai’s skin crawl; leaves him staring helpless as a beast cornered with how dark brows loosen from their furrow, the curve of the ninja’s mouth parting.

“You’ve waited too long,” he observes mutely, a rough thing, and it’s here that irritation spikes; clouds his features into a glower, leaves the spark in his eyes pained in a way Fai rips his own away from. “You keep waitin’ like this, I won’t give you a choice.”

Fai has to laugh at that, a bitter snarl. “As if you gave me one, in the first place?”

Silence, again (too common, too _hated_ ; Fai draws in a breath, stills himself against the venom he expects to come after, but there is nothing), and when a gold-tinted eye raises slowly through pale fringe, the look Kurogane fixes him with is tired, if anything else.

“I didn’t,” he mutters, after a moment. “And if I had to do it again, I would.”

(Stupid, stubborn _fool_ —)

“Stop _talking_ ,” Fai seethes, and he has moved before he can think; shoved the man before him back firm enough to leave the door rattling on its hinges, fingertips itching where they claw into the folds of his shirt. “Just _stop_ —”

And Kurogane does (whether from the shock of breath knocked out of him, from the prick of nails too inhuman a barely-there pressure on his skin, from the touch alone after so long of nothing, Fai can’t know); his blood beat-beat- _beats_ beneath his skin: throbs into the hand that catches instinctive on Fai’s sleeve, burns in the eyes that puzzle towards him, the pulse in his throat jumping, and Fai—

( _stares_ , because he can do nothing else; wrestles down a thin breath and swallows too loud in the stillness, fingers curling frantic through dark cloth—)

“Just _take it_ ,” Kurogane growls ( _growls_ , and there is a fire in his voice, the kind that leaves tremors deep in Fai’s bones); has the sheer audacity to tip his head back against the panelling and bare that beautiful ( _pounding_ ) throat ( _he wants this_ , roars a voice inside Fai’s head, sparking with a possession that claims him from head to heel, gnawing ravenous upon his gut to bloom sparks behind his eyes).

He can’t think. He is saying something, poisonous where it is hissed into the swell of that firm chest, lips caught on the collar of Kurogane’s shirt (skin too hot, its taste too known); shallow breath puffs against his temple where his mouth chases further, parting upon the tensing line of that strong neck—and there are calloused fingers cording through the gold of his hair, muscle pressed firm to the splay of his fingers (nails bleeding through the fabric, fanning into a slow drag where breath beneath shortens further), and Fai groans into his throat; tugs him clear off the flat of the door where his lips open to the hungry scrape of sharpened teeth.

He moves too quickly, a blurred thing through the shadows that leaves the hand curled tight through his hair spasming, falling sudden for balance; Kurogane claps his fingers to the laminate of their counter, the handles of the sink squeaking against his weight where his other palm fumbles, soap knocked into a half-done pile of tableware in a crashing rattle and a basket of fruit overturned, each fall of its contents to the flooring a heavy thud that chases through Fai’s bones. He’s too distracted to care, though (and a knee is between his own, knocking hard into the cabinetry, the pressed birch of the counter’s lip whining in protest where dark fingers coil sudden to their edges, a swallow rolling against the press of his tongue).

Thrill bleeds into a swooping rush through his veins, buzzing and breathless in the wait. (He feels nauseous. He feels _alive_.) Fear and anticipation tangle on his tongue, salt and musk and the taste of a storm before the light strikes. He can feel it on his breath; feel it in his bones, in his _blood_ —

The bite comes sudden (nails twisting; dragged _down_ ), and then there is _life_ , spilling across his teeth; a shockwave of bloody, primal euphoria that sweeps him from his fingertips to his toes, quenches the fire in his belly and reignites the flame tenfold, claws dragging desperate into a fist through black cloth to leave no space between them.

Kurogane’s knees are buckling, and he is falling, slowly (pulse thundering beneath Fai’s palm, pounding where his lips are pressed). A sound leaves him, stripped breathless and stunned, that wrestles beneath Fai’s lungs; drives an animalistic need deeper into his bones, the laminate a sudden scrape where blunt nails carve in, a frantic anchor through shuddering breath.

Fai drinks and drinks and _drinks_ , any urgency to stop a lost one. A hand is fisting at his back, rough fingers curling slow through the folds of his coat (all of it too sudden, too _good_ )—but the warning comes through clear enough, a sudden lash of sense that strips his body frozen and stunned, crawling from a possession that leaves copper electric on his tongue. He can’t breathe. (He needs to _stop_ ). His bones tremor, lost in the silence, and then he is pulling away (too rough, and he knows it, but he _can’t_ ), fangs slicking from the beat of his prey to leave his lips too warm against the chill of the air, a flinch carving up Kurogane’s spine.

There is terror, in Fai’s bones, and disgust, enough to run his blood cold (and _hunger_ ; a frantic, feral _need_ that latches onto the unfurling of his fingers to leave the squeeze of his palm tighter still—desperate for this closeness, to _never let go_ —)

He tries to tear himself away, instinctively; gives in to the urge to flee, realization a nauseous flood in his gut—but Kurogane’s hand falls from his back, fists sudden into his sleeve, a firm thing that he could far too easily rip himself from.

“Don’t,” is all the fool whispers (breathless, and hoarse, and sharpened), and Fai, shaking, stills; pulls in a quivering breath, fists his hand weakly into the warmth of Kurogane’s shirt.

“Why?” he breathes, thinly; smooths his other palm over black fabric, wrinkles his fingertips firm through it. “ _Why_?” His hands loosen, curl tight again; tremble over the lines of the body that lifts gradually from him, scraping over the edges of firm shoulders, fisting within his shirt all the more.

There is shallow breath against his jaw, still; slowly, that mouth moves, brushing over the hollow of his cheek, finding the lobe of his ear—and when Fai swallows, there is heat on his cheeks, and a sting in his eye, fingers curling desperate into the dark hair over Kurogane’s nape.

He turns closer, a wrinkle in his brow—but there are lips on his, and the hand at his back trailing higher—and when the kiss falls, he doesn’t push away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Which Witch](https://open.spotify.com/track/5yiBLMSH9DCRmBtws6wKY3) is _such a good vampire theme hgh_.


	6. phoenixfire and spellwork.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short, prosey drabble heavily inspired by [still as the water comes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13580292). This is Fai as those who have only heard rumors through cobbled alleys and caught glimpses through frosted trees would see him: a half-image, mythicized and muddled; something plucked from footprints in the snow.

Sage and spice lingers in the echo of his steps, and in the darkness those eyes flicker, _burn_ ; sharp is their gaze, shards of celestine that sting like frostbite and soothe like mountain mist.

To watch him move is to watch a waltz, flitting steps to the tunes of otherworldly strings, the dance of an outsider masqueraded; songs of bitter longing do not leave his lips, yet linger hidden beneath crescent grins and a violet veil strong as dragonfang, and above the surface still the façade gleams—

Love is not a word he speaks, buried beneath fursilks and the strength of ten lives before him, but sings through his touch; through the desperate longing that bleeds through half-moons printed on his palms and lips lingering on salt-speckled skin.

And still he raises higher evermore: a blinding, firebright, etherial thing—aura effervescent and haunting with strength rare matched, the power of old magicks singing deep in his bones; ones of rituals of old, performed lamplit in the wake of ancient forests; of fae-folk and beings unknown following eager with his presence; of the scent of silent earth, white and cold and shaking with every breath that passes through his teeth; and of heat, of new, lingering beyond.

He is old, and _tired,_ and yet he is born anew—and again and again he readies himself for the waking morning, touch strong enough to tear down an empire tying the silks of his necktie slow, steady.

And so the act parades on, once more.


	7. dragonblood and lionheart.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A partner piece to the previous chapter, this time focused on Kurogane. This one, similarly, shrouds him in unknowns: fearful gossipings and passed-down legends, wives-tales of a child sewn from the ashes.

Outside the palace gates, he is called Death: a demon carved from shadow, ebon-scaled and ravenquilled. He bristles beneath the light, and rare are those who have seen him—for the dark consumes him like the tides swallow the shoals, leaving nothing behind save twin embers that gleam bright as blood fresh-drawn.

He is bound beneath a cloak of starless night, his sword wrath and redemption. Silent he walks, and soundless he breathes—a beast descending from the mountains, steel-fanged and iron-clawed, carving flesh offerings for a god that burns, insatiable, beneath. 

(It is not the blood he craves, though he bathes in it: a cleansing that never purifies, ravenous and _red—_ caking his nails, staining his skin, bitter on teeth and tongue. What he craves is silence—what he craves is _peace_ —but the haunting is never-ending, no matter the prayers murmured in the dark.)

They say the shrines will curse him; that the rivers will run red at his touch; that the Dragon God himself took him into his cave and spat him back out (though the talisman strung to his hip sings blue with holy power, the mark of some ancient soul too vicious to be named)—for it was from demon’s blood that he was washed, and from ruins of hellfire that he was renamed, the homeland of a lord’s son buried beneath the ash.

When he grins, it is feral, and when he stares, it is _knifing_ —and yet few as those who had borne witness to either, fewer still could tell of his hands: their weight light enough to go unnoticed, weaving wraps of linen over open wounds; roughened, and hushing, and still.


	8. speak my words, so I may speak yours.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt, “Something cheerfully sappy where the hubbies are in love and domestic and enjoy teasing/flustering their s.o.” Set loosely post-series; could be seen as a continuation of _3\. but in the rain, you’re beautiful_. Slight NSFW.

He has that look in his eye again—a wistful, sighing, distant sort of gleam, as oft muted and melancholic as it is brimming with something that is all small-smiled and warm heart—and Kurogane can’t look away.

(Not out of apprehension for it being a sign of the first, because he knows, now, that such looks have since become reserved for the latter—for the mage is always lost in thought, weaving aimless across his own steps and fingers tangled in webs of pit-pattering rhythm; but now Kurogane _sees_ it, painted as clear across that pale face as the film of white that stripes down the neck of the woman striding past them.)

At one time, he may have scoffed, buried beneath suspicion as suffocating as it was knifing with the way those eyes avoided and lips curled half-real, so close and infinitely too far; now, he short-circuits, thrown boyish into an off-beating tango of fumbling hands and flushed cheeks—because as often as that look is directed at the ancient eaves bowing around them, it is even moreso turned towards _him_ (and he doesn’t know what the _fuck_ to do about it).

Fai’s smile blooms, slanting wider on one side with just a flash of teeth (too roguish and strange on him, a side unseen for countless months now nakedly bared without hesitation—though it has taken so long, _so_ long, to get here), and Kurogane jolts.  “What?” he snaps, a familiar squawk from feathers too-ruffled. 

Fai's eyes crinkle at the corners, skipping quick away. “Nothing,” he hums, though Kurogane knows damn well what _nothing_ means (sly and cast directly at him, distinguishable no matter the jarble of his accent hanging thick on that silver tongue:  _You’re shier than you look._ )  His skin writhes beneath his silks as his eyes cut down. 

“Tche.”

“ _Feh_ ,” comes Fai’s voice, perfectly mocking; glittering eyes dart back to ones searing to hellfire as his smile turns crescent and his shoulders square off, low geta clacking into a bearish stance. “I’m Shinobi-san, displeased to everything—surrounded with lunatics and buffoons—”

His voice has fallen so many octaves it’s _absurd_ , and Kurogane might have tried to dampen out a snort if the imitation wasn’t a clear jab at him. “Will you _shut it_ ,” is what he seethes, instead, even as he can feel his pulse thundering (the crowd around them moves on, unphased, though a select few pick up the reference with small chortles arrowed his way), and Fai just grins, stupid and crooked and real.

“I’ll shut it as _you_ shut it,” he retorts, weaving easily around a trio of clattering children with no heed of mind for the line of foot-traffic they send unfurling. Kurogane settles broodishly back beside him, breath melting into a huff through the air that twinkles through a glass chime above.

“ _When_ I shut it,” he corrects simply, “Or if.”

“ _If_ you shut it,” echoes Fai, and the fond crease at his cheek does something twisting and dangerous to Kurogane’s lungs.

(The wizard’s a goddamn fool, from every inch of head to heel; yet after the weight of his humor’s absence—after months of silence, avoidance, _nothingness_ between them, stripped raw beneath the hellish grit that had been a time of allegiances reforged and souls remade—he’ll drink in every moment of it he can.)

“So,” Fai starts up again, as he meanders them casually to a storefront displaying furisodes of pressed cotton and vibrant silk, “If I say I go somewhere—”

“If you _are_ going,” Kurogane mutters, absently tracking the way crystalline eyes chase from a pattern of rivered gold to bright moons of blue and white, “Or want to go; or will go.”

“If I want to go somewhere,” amends Fai easily (and it baffles Kurogane, at every given chance, how quick the bastard can slip unknown phrases into everyday conversation), and hums, a slight pout puffing out his bottom lip as he repeats the words again, intonation slippery and coarse, “I want to go—”

(  行きたいです  )

The words tug through Kurogane’s attention vaguely, muscle-memory. Tingles of magic linger with every spoken sound, a whispered hush of violet runes traced between them the moment they had crossed the threshold of the city gate ( _I want to practice_ , Fai had said, the reach of the bun’s magic stripped to give way to a mother tongue knifing and deep, a husky thing that made Kurogane’s stomach curdle strangely).

“What is it, in yours?” he asks, without warning, careless for the way he has been caught red-handed; his mouth is too dry and his throat clumsy where he swallows, but distracted as he is, he can’t care too much for it.

Fai blinks soft at him. The pale fringe that tangles through the breeze, air rustling into another chiming pling above them, scatters across his nose and draws a wrinkle through its center, and his fingers rush high to send their ends to the side, drawn flat and clean behind the pink of his ear.

(It looks _wrong_ , and Kurogane is swallowed beneath a sudden urge to keep them ruffled, in that perpetual state of bed-head and tangled ends, creased by the dried twist of ribbons tied tight to fall in sweeping waves from crown to shoulder; the knot chosen today clings still to that messiness, done quickly and absent-minded in the early hours of the morning, crimson thread a bright shock through the gold. Kurogane’s eyes chase the sun-kissed curve from ear to nape and linger, perhaps too long, on the ends caught wildly on the collar of his kimono, its silk laying just a breath from kissing the first notch of pale spine.)

The words that leave the mage sound warped, rustling in the back of his throat, slurring and thick and smooth as herbed oil (warm as a flame and bitter-strong, the way coffee had first tasted on his tongue when the kid had poured him a cup from a silver tin)—and it sticks beneath his skin, worming lower to fix itself between his lungs.

( я хочу уйти )

(He's used to lofty giggles and vowels pitching high, an animated rollercoaster of pronunciation morphed easily beneath the spell of Mokona’s magic. This is nothing close—natural, neutral; slipping a breath lower and without a trace of teasing—and it does something _vicious_ to him.)

“Hn,” he hums, a passive acknowledgement, when the only thing he wants to be saying is _Fucking hell, keep talking, and don’t you dare stop._

“Different, huh?” Fai says, smiling simply. “It came from the mountains, the language of old magicks.”

“Hn,” hums Kurogane again.

(When Fai talks about magic, it is its own spell unfolded—for the magic of Nihon’s priests was sacred, bred from holy ritual and given by the divine, a blessing from the gods above; but _his—_ his magic was twisting, ancient, pulled from the ashes of pagan rituals cast high to the starlit goddess and summer moon; firefly embers of tarragon and sage, twining close into a labyrinth of old tongue; stories and life and myth from blood-speckled snow.

His mistress speaks of magic as the heavens descended. When his lover speaks of it, it is the heavens unearthed.)

The quietness isn’t missed, and Fai tilts his head, a slight motion floating in Kurogane’s peripheral when he turns towards him. “You always give me this look,” he chuckles, fingering absent at the thick sleeve of an emerald kimono as he twists to lean against the beam of the store’s entrance, "when I talk of magic.”

Kurogane fights to keep the rise of blood out of his cheeks as he weaves deeper into the shop. His gaze flickers across one pattern of summer greens, and another of faded indigo; stutters sudden with lungs caught over a display of midnight black, crimson silk threaded into glistening plumes of mountain and mist that dance beneath the lowlight.

“It’s just…different,” he says, after a quick swallow. “Like how the old tribes saw it.”

“Ah,” comes a slow reply, and Fai circles over from the other side of the kimono, his eyes tracking easily from hem to neckline before glancing over to meet his. His smile creases further, head dropping puppyish as he turns back to admire the design before him.  “These are just your colors, hm?”

Kurogane can’t force the blush down quick enough, mouth pitching into an awkward purse as he cranes his head away, as if there’s nothing to see at all.  “Uh—they’re, uh…fine,” he splutters, pitifully; it only draws the flush of red a full shade darker as he sends auburn eyes to the ceiling, jaw flexing into a quick clench of teeth and tendon as he stalks farther away.

(Fuck the idiot and his pointless language and his cunningness and—damn it all, fuck _him_.

His brain cycles from insult to double-entendre and sticks there, the heat in his cheeks yanked a full degree higher as he reasons that yes, really, he would _love_ to get fucked by that idiot, whispering that silken mother-tongue in his ear and being perfectly cunning about it all.)

“You don’t run away,” Fai hums, viper-tongued and teeth flashing, and Kurogane braces one hand on his hip as he picks disinterestedly through a pile of mixed obi on a nearby table, dark brows pinched firm.

“ _Don’t_ run away,” he corrects, though the urge to kick himself that follows is enough to make his fingers spasm into an exasperated twist.

“ _Ah_ —thank you,” purrs his lover, sidling up far too easily against the bend of his arm, and the kiss barely-felt that tapers against thin silk is joined by a rush of breath and a rasp of unknown consonants that make Kurogane’s stomach all but bottom-out.

( не убегай )

“Don’t run away,” Fai restates, soft as he can, and his lover stands still as ruins waiting to crumble. “I say we get it,” he chirps on, a break between the silence that lingers, and his smirk stretches wide and unabashed when the wild blush on Kurogane’s face is swept into a new incarnation of near-fuscia, shoulders shimmying stiffly from beneath pale hands to stalk towards the back of the store.

“ _Why_?” he huffs, though he is very aware he has been found out, and damn well ready to die from it. “We’ve got—you have plenty—”

“Oh, but a new one is nice,” murmurs Fai, trailing the man before him with smile far too knowing and glittering eyes far too coy as he toys with the hinge of a box of kanzashi in passing. “And I don’t have one _just_ like that.”

“Right,” Kurogane bites out, cheeks blistering and hot as he fixes a firm stare upon a wall of brightly-roped geta. He feels those willowy fingers before they land, a light press between his shoulder blades that drags a shiver from nape to heel; knows the mage can _feel_ it, with every bleed of magic beneath that fair skin, every gleam of its power in eyes too bright to be of this dimension entirely. That palms slides with just a trace of possession down the curve of his spine, lingering deceptively sweet at the small his back.

“Maybe too-big,” Fai continues, and though the words slip out a bit tangled, accent clinging still to the slight of his tongue, Kurogane can read into their meaning like print on paper, throat bobbing slow beneath the heat of a slim chest sinking against him. “Almost for you, too…so that we can share, hm…? And you’ll have me, even without me—”

(Oversized. _His_ size. Big enough to wrap across his own body; to drape uneven across those lithe shoulders—trapping the scent of that pale skin within its folds, and feeling it sink into his own, when he would pull the fabric upon him—

Kurogane, rapidly, can’t breathe.)

“Uh,” he puffs out, caught on his tongue (and for all his thundering heart can give him, begs the gods above to smite him beneath the floorboards, to the underworld where he _belongs_ ), “I mean, if you, uh—if you want—”

“Oh, if _I_ want?” Fai purrs. His voice melts dangerously into a wave of seduction, so unbelievably inappropriate to be uttered in a public space that Kurogane is halfway ready to strangle him.

“Yes, _yes_ , if you want,” he barks, and stands ready to storm away like a child over-prodded, cheeks aflame and fists clenched as he resolves to burn a hole through the wall.

(He’ll kill him.)

He’s entirely too dysfunctional to handle the twinkle of laughter that lands into a smug little peck on the back of his shoulder, and barely able to keep his composure when Fai saunters up to the sales clerk, completely unabashed in the way he points with ease to the pattern that had since become the source of Kurogane’s demise, asking far too informally for a larger size ( _Like my grumpy warrior here, ne?_ ) with a grin as self-indulgent as it is wicked.

(He’ll _kill him_.)

Kurogane stumbles through biting corrections of grammar ( _Formality, you idiot_ ), and stands, awkward as an elephant in the middle of a mice troupe, as the unwilling receiver of their newest purchase, jaw tight and cheeks speckled pink. He’s quick to cut a murderous glare to the sales-clerk flashing a grin almost brazen enough to rival Fai’s own.

“Thank _you_ ,” sing-songs his lover, saving him from his own floundering by snatching the parcel with delicate ease. He leads the path back to the street, without a second care of mind for how Kurogane is left a gaping mess; only a moment passes before the silence shatters, a thunder of clacking heels and muffled grumblings—and if the heavy palm that coils within the silks at his waist lingers a touch longer than necessary for its expected scoldings, Fai's grin blooms all the wider for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so gotdang weak for language sharing/flirting. I have a longstanding presumption that Ceresian/Valerian pulls from Russian/Slavic roots (mainly for the visual codes in CLAMP's design for Fai, but also because language-creating is not even remotely a skill of mine; those who do so have my admiration x1000). You can pry the headcannon that Kurogane melts at anything Fai says in Ceresian from my cold dead hands. (Things happened in Yama, okay. There would be...associations. /waggles eyebrows)


	9. wings.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was my submission for 'The Dragon & The Phoenix' Kurofai fanzine that we started in the fall of last year. So much amazing work went into this zine, and I'm incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate on it; being able to see something I've written printed alongside so many beautiful pieces still puts my heart all in knots. I wanted to make it accessible for those who weren't able to snag a physical copy, so here felt like the best place to make a home for it.

It slumbers in the mountains,  
so the townsfolk say,  
with longsword teeth  
and claws of iron,  
in whose veins bleeds the strength  
of a hundred men  
( _devoured_ ).

You cross paths with the beast  
by chance  
( _hunted_ )  
with fear lit in your hand.  
The light flickers, twists,  
too hidden—  
( _hunter_ )  
and you dare   
not breathe.

A dragon leers  
from the shadows,  
with silver scales  
and molten breath,  
in whose eyes burns the heat  
of a newborn flame  
( _devouring—_ )

His name is steel,  
blackened;  
demon's blood  
and fire—  
a vengeance worn  
like night itself  
( _unseen_ ).

A shadow follows you  
through the forests,  
with midnight cloak  
and raven hair,  
in whose laugh bleeds the thunder  
of a storm  
out of sight—  
( _you are caught_ )  
and the downpour falls  
slowly.

His words are jagged,  
gold through the cracks  
( _broken—_ )  
and you shatter,  
wingless  
( _remade_ ).

A warrior watches you  
through the tides,  
with curling mouth  
and weathered palms,  
in whose eyes gleam the spark  
of a sun, swallowed  
by the sea—  
( _you are drowning_ )  
and the stars rise  
slowly.

He calls you Mage  
and Wizard  
and Idiot  
and Liar—  
(and you try,  
you _try_ ,  
not to give in).

An ally drags you  
from the surf,  
with broken voice  
and quivering lungs,  
in whose heart bleeds a flicker  
you deny—  
( _you deny_ )  
and the blood falls  
slowly.

He will not  
let you go,  
and you—  
( _you are terrified_ ).

A fire haunts you  
through the dark,  
with resentment  
on his tongue  
and heartache   
in his blood—  
( _red_ )  
and you  
devour.

(He will not  
let you go,  
he will _never—_ )

A savior snares you  
from death,  
with copper on his clothes  
and ash in his skin  
( _dying_ )  
and you—

He is weak  
and wavering  
and worn  
(but when his eyes  
find you,  
they are  
_wild_ ).

A lover stands beside you,  
with lionheart  
and wired vein,  
in whose touch bleeds the promise  
of _now_  
(and evermore),  
and you—

You are able to fly  
again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always had a heart for poetry, but it was a reading of the poem _[Sometimes a Wild God](https://tomhirons.com/poetry/sometimes-a-wild-god)_ by Tom Hirons that reignited my fascination with it; since then, that one, in particular, has been a huge inspiration for my stylization, and carries an ancientness about it that I love trying to evoke. I aimed to do that more directly, here: I didn't intend to walk into it as a summary of sorts for their relationship, but moreso as a kind of parable, something picked apart and remolded over time. I geek out a lot to myself when I finish things I really like, and this one was certainly no exception: I'd been itching to finish a narrative poem for ages, so I had a lot of fun tinkering around with it. Hope y'all enjoyed it, too!


	10. sunrays in the shadow.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little drabble on life, love, and seasonal depression. Set further down the line in my resettled Suwa AU. Initially inspired by [this poem](https://sesapoetry.tumblr.com/post/176240351139) by Sesa; I’ve been wrapped up in ideas of relapse and recovery recently, and the first stanza completely captured that for me.

It is after the last beam of treated pine has been slotted into their manor’s framework that winter comes to Suwa. 

The first snowfall of the season drapes sheets of white over the slopes of her valleys, smudging the horizon ashen and hazed, and through the powdered branches of evergreens that tower about the perimeter—a great hoard of ancient giants, bowing upon their mountains like generals staging acquisitions, the night filled with hissing tunes of love and war-song in a tongue time had long since forgotten—the sunlight skitters into quick greeting: a kiss of warmth through the short-lived hours from dawn to dusk; and then the dark devours. 

The landscape changes in the cold. The ruggedness of Nihon’s western highlands turns all the more harsh, if beautifully: the peaks looming in sharp black points, cut together like dragonspine; the fields silvered and shivering. The shadows twist into living things, and at all hours the wind howls—something baleful and divine unearthed with every moonrise, whose breath wails of fox-song and fate and death denied.

It’s nothing like Ceres. Neither had most other snow-clouded hills their makeshift family often found themselves smothered in; still, he had devoted much of his immeasurably long life to drawing such comparisons. 

(Memory stripped the magic to dread: made the taste of life’s sleeping death needle unshakably in his bones; kept his eyes straying, more than once, to hunt for bodies beneath the snow. He knows that all is gone, now: left behind with the shell of himself he had long spent constructing—and that is something no part of him _regrets_ , a future claimed willingly and wantonly in the form of a bloodied hand hauling him to salvation—but if he has learned anything after years upon years of time and space travelled, it is the unbending given that the body _remembers_ , no matter how the mind forgets.)

Fruitless efforts had been made to avoid such remembering. He had found himself quite set on nibbling away at the pleasures of a new life: new titles, and servants, and territory, and home: the adjustment of it all no simple task alongside months of rain-plagued voyages through the neighboring villages and enough political circlings to drive a man mad—and if Kurogane is pulled away more nights than most to wrestle down the nuances of freshly-appointed bureaucracy, Fai can’t fault him for it. The hours alone gnaw at him, nonetheless.

(They mitigate that, gradually. It’s the bullheaded point-blankness of his lover that Fai equally loathes and cherishes, and a trait he has since found himself adopting: more than one night ending with dinner unfinished and questions laid plainly between them, the despair over the cold and mockery of solitude and all other gauzes of over-dramatics unravelled to dig out the root of the problem. For both of them, admissions were like pulling teeth. For both of them, the removal was needed.)

Routines begin then: walks in the morning, after breakfast, before meetings and training rounds and travel and banter. Split between their respective tasks—Fai spending hours buried in piles of palace archives, hand-threading documents of territorial acquisition, and familial history, and financial records specific to these lands and its surrounding, a strategy map for friend and foe both; leadership’s mantle settling over Kurogane’s shoulders like something that had never left, war-maps and economic oversight as natural beneath his hands as the weight of braided steel—they build something close enough to be called purpose, an easy thing to slip on and peel away. They lead festivities, and host banquets, and grow familiar with the pattern of dinners and tea, the chill chased away by the warmth of paper lanterns and the boisterous roar of new-hired samurai hardly old enough to fill their boots—and, eventually, unexpectedly, Fai uncovers a new comparison.

Five weeks, Kurogane is meant to be gone—tacked on casually to the tail their morning’s usual walk, snow crunching beneath their boots and their breath frosting through the thicket; something to do with territorial disputes and batty generals in council, a chore Tomoyo had made a habit of slipping his way once political discretion had failed and Plan B had been invariably put to action. (A daimyo whose reputation had grown so mythically lethal over the years had made the sight of the man’s flesh and blood alone enough to move the heavens; it had taken him no time at all to see he had become—quite transparently, on her part—something of a diplomatic secret weapon.)

He hadn’t sounded the _least_ bit pleased about that, grumbling and growling as usual—but the wind had made the disheveled, damp-curled ends of his hair sweep from the breadth of his shoulders like ink dry-brushed across canvas, the heavy cottons of his hanten snow-speckled and grayed, a coalish blend of earthen tones almost rich enough to be called green. The forest had smelled of black pine oil and the damp cool that sticks on frost-melted bark. The sky was on the fringes of a storm. And Fai was frozen.

The realization hit him like the creeping warmth of how it feels to be drunk: slow and unnoticed, a quiet entangling that one often only realizes once they have stumbled to their feet and ended up dumfounded and giggling, flat on their ass, not long after. There had always been an unspoken divide between them, a contrast of opposites: everything from the color of their eyelashes to their preferences for food and drink. Naturally, Fai had projected every ounce of his own self-doubts into that, constructing a narrative of the natural world around his own loathsome reflections; winter a bitter reminder of every skeleton he had shut away, whose deathly claws he had never fully pulled free from; and summer a vibrant showcase of everything he had learned to love, the sun bleeding beneath the horizon to paint the valleys red and gold, the taste of forest air after the rain seeping down from the mountains to whistle through the chimes above their terrace: all of it wildly untamed, and beautifully alive, and strikingly carried in the man walking before him.

There is no sunlight, now, and no rain—only muted, and stark, and cold—but head bowing beneath the quiver of a snow-drooped evergreen, the drifts peppered upon the strong line of his back, Kurogane steps into a clearing of frosted eaves that part for him in strange reverence, as though welcoming home a soul as ancient and indefinable as them; as though, he, too, were carved from mountains of black dragonscale; as though the ricefields’ dried whisperings sang of an old, weathered lullaby, born from times of war and defeat—something he may have recited openly, in another life; something he had been caught humming, quite recently, alone and absent, frowning at taxation drafts at his feet.

Fai stares longer than he means to. The image is belatedly broken: a scuttle of feathers and a rupture of birdsong, some ways above, that leaves him startled and blinking, cheeks warm. It’s the first time he can remember listening to those small trilling reminders of life, since the first snow came.

“S’only a month, Mage,” Kurogane huffs, assuming the silence for typical brooding. “Not like I’m leaving to war.” He turns over his shoulder, irritably puzzling, and just a touch bemused—but the furrow falls.

Fai can’t imagine what he must look like. His brow wrinkles, and his mouth twists, a short-lived effort to dampen the confusion strung across his face. Then he bursts into tears.

After he’s blubbered, and fretted, and waved off the bloom of exasperation that prickles, worriedly, upon those sharp features, called back to his side in what feels like two strides ( _No, no, it’s not that_ ), they stand quietly among the thickening snow and trade questions for small-spoken answers: roughened callouses brushing gentle beneath Fai’s lashes, tucking one damp curl of golden hair behind his ear.

“You sure you’re alright?” Kurogane murmurs, far too gently, after some strange, convoluted explanation about winter and poor associations and, yes, to Fai’s unwanted correlation, him leaving has been dusted off from the hole it was buried in. Fai scowls and blushes pink to his ears.

“It’s—I’ll be _fine_ ,” he sighs, smiling and embarrassed. He scrubs at his eyes stubbornly, then keeps them covered, moaning pitifully into his palms. “It’s fine, it’s _nothing_ , I’m—I don’t know why I’m _like_ this.”

A few keen insults would have surely been fired his way, in response to that, had timing been different. Kurogane fits a jab in, anyway. “Can’t have you breaking down, every time I leave,” he grumbles, softly still. His hands settle over Fai’s own; draw them slow from their hiding, mouth puffing and cheeks flushed, blue eyes quick to dart away. Kurogane tilts his head, a dimple creasing in one cheek. “Makin’ me think you just want to tag along—”

“ _No_ ,” Fai gasps, “Tomoyo will keep me for _ages_ —”

“ _Denka_ ,” Kurogane corrects huffily. “If those brats start picking up casual names from _you_ , I’ll be spending weeks kicking respect back into them.”

“Afraid they’ll call you Kuro-chan?”

Simple as that, any room for chastising fades, and they are bantering same as always, teary-eyed and sheepish grins nonetheless. The walk continues, and the morning passes. By mid-afternoon, the snow turns torrential; steered away from appointed trainings, Kurogane makes excuses to find time at Fai’s side, instead. They bow over maps for village reconstructions while the candles burn low, squinting at cost summaries and bickering over which samurai would be best promoted to head which settlement. Their servants hardly bother them, only tacking down hearth-warmed liquor and a simple dinner, while they filter through scenarios of their empress’s latest political agendas. The flurries taper off, eventually; by then, Kurogane’s off.

He has an odd tick for traveling at night, something Fai has teased endlessly as a curse of too many years trained under ninjustsu; he likes already having territory under his feet by morning, likes knowing where the day will finish instead of waiting for it to begin. So it’s only with a small round of scowling that they find themselves giving their goodbyes upon the courtyard terrace, vaguely out of sight and earshot, Fai bundled in a tangle of wools and Kurogane a striking force of heavy layers and lacquered steel, hair tied back. 

“Won’t be gone long,” he says, wriggling one hand into the padding of a riding glove. He tugs the fabric taunt, flexes his fingers; works on the other, synthetic veins gleaming blue beneath his skin. “Try to keep your head on straight, until I come back,” he continues, and glances up, eyes embering and bright even through the shadow. “If these brats do anything out of line, you make sure I hear about it.” 

A well-worn list, turned increasingly routine with every departure. Fai laughs. “I know.” He smooths out the creases of Kurogane’s collar, by habit; lets his hands fall to rest against the cold plating strapped to his chest. “Behave yourself.” 

One dark brow jumps up, dusk lips curling sharp in a way that screams _You think my ass is getting dragged out there to behave?_ , and Fai ticks one finger sharply over his breastplate, mouth blooming coyly despite himself. “ _Behave_ ,” he purrs. Kurogane _Heh’s_. 

A kiss is tucked just beneath the slope of Fai’s ear, cotton-padded knuckles touched faint to his chin: and then Kurogane is stepping away, without another word, sweeping into his saddle alongside a handful of entourage. 

Fai waits until the dark swallows them; until the firelight caught within Ginryuu’s hilt vanishes beneath the night—and then, fingers whitened, he steps behind the tracking: shuts the wind’s howl out behind the whisper of shoji drawn shut. 

His fingers stick, and his lungs shiver. Five weeks. He supposes he can do fine, with that.

The morning will bring another day. By then, the sun will shine all the clearer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This particular drabble has seen different versions on nearly every writing software I have between my phone and computer: I had so many ideas for where it could go, and I loved the flow of so many sections, but I just couldn't figure out how to stitch them together. Inspiration shot out to finish this in one sitting after clicking through my phone by chance, and I've absolutely loved every minute of it. There's a lot that was omitted from this that I would love to turn into a direct continuation of sorts: all of it is extremely domestic, and tooth-rottingly sweet, and just. _Husbands._ I'll get around to it, at some point.


	11. whisky from a bottle of wine.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kurogane is a bartender, Fai is a musician, and love-at-first-banter is as much predictable chaos as the mazes of modern Tokyo see fit.

The first warm-lit beacon of life between the rain-dancings of potted ginkgo and cream cloth becomes the single point of sanity for one sorely-lost musician, ravenous as an old witch latching to the fires of a youthspell: open cracks the poor shoji, dredging sleeve pooled into an ugly slop against limbs that spitter like fish against wet rope, the scraped heel of one soaked brogue squelching onto the rice matting, and then the other.

Amidst an odd collection of fellow drowned rats, neatly tucked away into the hidings of warm nihonshu and gossip from the torrentials that had descended upon Monzen-Nakacho like vengeful ghouls, the musician in question might have fit in easily enough: _might_ have, had not a mop of gold-gleamed hair and ajisai eyes announced his displacement any clearer than the soaked leaflets of sheet music smattering onto the bar’s edge. His residency on Post-Soviet Classics had given a cold dose of reality to that strange prickle of othering from his first night lost in the maze of suburban Tokyo—needless to say, he had grown _quite_ used to the quick-sewn stares since then: enough so to ignore the similar-hedged crainings entirely, the soaked brim of his cap snapping quiet to the panelling, limbs puddling into a great heap upon the bar stool.

“Gin,” he puffs out dismally, fingers staked into the wrinkle of his lashes, “stirred, with lemon.”

There’s a scuffing of linen, a creaking of wood. If the storms had laid claim to a human spirit, even they wouldn’t have come close to the thunder that speaks. “No vermouth?”

Through the slits of gnarled fingers, blue eyes stare stupidly into a black void, tongue abruptly useless. ( _Christ, was that a man or a demon?_ ) “Uh, no—no, _yes_ , I mean—right, yes.” A low breath draws into lungs that fill slow as a truck engine: catches onto the edges of a confusion so palpable that the prospect of fleeing back to the downpour quickly poses itself as a blessed refuge. “I mean— _yes_ , no vermouth, just—actually, you know what, um, do you just, um—do you have whisky?”

Silence, again. A low scoff. “Yeah.”

“Um.” More silence. The chattering in the corner had grown deafeningly still. “What, um. What kind?”

“You ever set foot in izakaya before?” Another scoff. “‘What kind.’ What kind do you want?”

“Um.” The panelling creaks again. A finger _tack-tacks_.

“Sweet?” the voice grumbles on, impatience squeezed into a low drawl. “Dry?” More silence. Another huff. “Y’gotta at least give me that.”

“I—uh—either, um, either works.”

The temperature of the room had risen some ten degrees. The silence was suffocating. “So, you…want me to just make something,” says the voice, bland as a dead weight. By now, the very thought of response seemed a cursed one. The panelling _tack-tacks_ again. “Alright—you’re the one paying.”

From the cover of one pathetically slumped hand, blue eyes fly into a haggard glare upon the retreating mantle of broad ( _broad_ ) shoulders (that stretched up, and _up_ , and—gods above, he was built like a _mountain_ ). He has some shred of mind to rip them away, before any further onslaught of social failure can be wrecked upon him: through the rattle of clattering ice and uncorked bottle and stirred silver, he keeps himself fixed in a bumbling stew upon the bleeding notes of his music, petering numbly through water-glued pages to shake stanzas clean and smear ink dry, and all but jumps out of his skin when a stemmed glass is tapped sudden to the bar.

From the splay of weathered fingers, callouses etched upon dark skin, pours a ribbon of melted frost: lemon oil coaxed into a slow pollination, curled peel traced along its edges as fine as an artist shaping glass, left to drown beneath the surface in a quiet abandonment. “You don’t drink alone, at these,” the voice rumbles up again, and finally, _finally_ , he looks up: finds himself frozen at the slow flit of eyes framed by lashes dark as coal, a burgundy almost deep enough to be called bloody. Another glass is set down, carved wide and sharp, filled generously from a hand-lettered bottle, whose contents leave the air briefly lethal with malt and oak. A heavy hand squeezes the cork back down: rolls the glass into one broad palm to let the liquor paint the edges of parting mouth, a slow swallow. “What’s your name?”

“Fluorite. Um, Fluorite Fai—but my name, it’s, you know—all my students call me Ishi-san.” Fai laughs, a touch awkwardly. “It’s a little joke. You know, because the, um—the stone.” He smiles wider, draws in a tense breath. “Um.” His eyes chance another look, wandering briefly from sharp cheek, twitching brow: darts from the coiled knot of raven-black hair back to eyes that stare through his soul. Acutely, he remembers he looks like a shipwrecked heathen. His eyes flee again. “What’s, uh—what’s yours? Your name, I mean.”

Another huff. “Just call me Kurogane.” The man lifts the whisky again: downs the rest of it in one gulp, breath husking. “I own this place.”

Fai mirrors the tide of that swallow with helpless abandon. “You look young, to be the owner,” he says, managing a small grin.

A pointed stare sharpens over lowered glass. “And last I checked, this wasn’t the shopping district.” A wrinkle creases over a dark brow, bloody eyes clipping down. “You gonna drink that, or not?”

“Not very— _polite_ , are you?” confounds Fai, still properly trying to pick his stomach off the floor: his fingers fumble, scrape the glass smoothly over polished wood. He bends down into a cautious sip, rainwater beading off his fringe to stain thinly against the grain, dimly aware of dark eyes snapping upon that droplet as though watching an ember singe a hole into a sacred tapestry.

“It’s a bar,” Kurogane grates, after a moment: yanks his eyes back up with measured caution, muscle pulled taunt over one cheek. “I’m here to work, not be a lap dog.”

Fai, chilled gin still a cold brush of pine on his tongue, stares dumfounded again into eyes sharp as steel, and finds himself suddenly alone with a waving call of one couplet of salary women and a _thwip_ of a navy towel upon a black shoulder, the chatter of the room rushing back like a wildfire. He remembers to swallow, once the sting of the alcohol leaves his teeth jittering, caught in a quiet tide of juniper and citrus, like a memory of summer in the snow.

“Where do you teach?”

Golden lashes flutter, suddenly snared within the slight fraying of a black collar, gold glimmering finely beneath the hemming. “Huh?”

“You said you had students.” Kurogane squeaks open the cork of whisky, fills his glass again.

“Oh. _Oh_ , um—” Fai frazzles back a damp curl of fringe behind his ear, only distantly noticing the absent flit of dark lashes, a slight tracing. “I have a summer residency at the College of Music,” he continues, and coughs, cheeks pink. “I was originally at the Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory, in St. Petersburg. I, um—finished my certifications there, last year.”

Kurogane hums, as though making a self-confirmation. Dark eyes track further, slipping to slow-drying parchment. “Piano?”

Fai blinks. “Yes,” he says slowly. His mouth trips into a smile. “But, um—I’m not a teacher of piano—not theory, or anything. I teach music history: changes in movements, based on cultural shifts, and, um—um, how do you call it—how influences in music are adapted and then re-adapted, and then traded on at different points, to become, ah—assimilated into the greater practice, you know: what becomes standard, at a given time.” He toys with the stem of his glass, eyes darting down. “I’m very interested in what’s happening now, actually—a lot of my research has been on music as performative identity, and how that has been shaped into national thought—or not, um—just national identity in general, I suppose—that removal from the original source; the claiming of inheritance, based on the here and now—that sort of thing.”

He clears his throat again: lifts his glass into another sip, peeking quick to find the man before him with shifted shoulders and studying eyes, head tilted just enough to free a strand of raven over one brow, almost long enough to brush his cheek. Fai swallows thinly, gin a slow tingle down his throat. “That’s—probably boring, though,” he laughs, glass set back in a quiet click. “I’m sure you’d, ah— _much_ rather hear about the state of real-world things—”

Another scoff, one that could almost be called a laugh. “Hear enough of that shit, as it is,” Kurogane grumbles. He straightens up from the bar, only briefly, weight still steeped into his palms; _tack-tacks_ one finger again, muscle rippling slow up dark skin. “Don’t mind it. It’s different.”

Fai’s mouth wobbles, brows raising faintly. “Different from what?” he breathes.

The lamplight glistens off the liquor bottles: catches in another strand of dark hair that spills free from its binding with the tousling of one firm palm over his temple. “It’s all office politics, family shit; kids stressed by class.” Kurogane takes another sip of his whisky; turns the glass thoughtfully to study the gloss of amber within it, thumb hushing over its heel. “Everybody’s got troubles,” he mutters. Fai blinks, watching him set the glass down. “Always had music in the house, growing up. Mom loved it. Don’t keep up with it much, anymore, but doesn’t mean I don’t…”

Fai tilts his head. His mouth quirks. “Don’t?”

Kurogane shrugs, bloody eyes caught on the edges of the bar, focused for all they slip across memory’s shoals. His thumb hushes on his jaw: falls to knead down the line of his neck, drops to anchor to the bar once more. He looks up, faraway still. “Don’t still like it,” he mutters; looks back to Fai, then down again: cranes short over one shoulder to assess the chittering clusters of the crowd. “Rain’s stopping.”

Fai toys with the edges of his glass. “Mh.”

“Where were you actually headed?”

“Well, I wasn’t— _well_.” A laugh bubbles, despite himself; leaves Fai with rolling eyes and mouth stretching wide, a touch clownishly. “That, um—that obvious, huh?”

Kurogane arches one brow. “Like I said,” he scoffs, “Don’t see anyone but the locals knocking around alleys like this. Any further, and you’d be back in Edo.”

“Isn’t that the charm of it?” Fai muses, lifting his glass into another sip. The furrow in dark skin deepens tenfold, then loosens; melts into a crease around one side of his mouth, breath puzzling.

Kurogane shakes his head: grumbles, “I guess,” with hands pushing back from the bar, folding into a loose knot over the swell of his breath. “You took the wrong transfer from Otemachi, didn’t you?” he says, after a pause. The dimple in his cheek creases again.

Fai feels heat bleed to his ears. “It was _busy_ ,” he snips, “and I was already late to my meeting this morning, and I thought I missed my train _then_ , and I left one of my files at home, and the _crowd_ —”

One hand raises firmly into his line of vision. “Like I said—everybody’s got troubles.” Kurogane fixes a dull stare on baffled blue eyes. “You wanna dump some of your own, save it for another time.”

“Oh, I _see_ ,” Fai gapes, and laughs fully. “I suppose I’ll just have to come back,” he tacks on, with quite a diligent reach for something close enough to call flirtation, mouth pressing into a slow flash of teeth. The dry burn of molten eyes leveled his way leaves his bones withering.

“Meaning when you get lost again,” Kurogane says lowly. His mouth curls again, lethal for all it is faint. Fai’s stomach all but falls through the floorboards, for it.

“I won't—I won’t get _lost_ ,” he babbles, knee jittering, “I will do _fine_ , just—just _watch_ —”

“Take the T train back over the river,” Kurogane continues, blatantly ignoring: sinks his weight into his palm, nudging his head towards the doorway. “Straight that way.”

“I know—I _know_ how to get to the _train_ ; I do have a phone—”

“Apparently, you don’t.” Fai gapes, again. Kurogane’s brow twitches. “Take it _West_ , this time.” His finger douses, a touch aimlessly, then turns. “Y’know. That way?”

Fai’s cheeks burn bright as a brushfire. “I _know_ which way is _West_ —I— _Christ_ —just, just give me the bill.” He scrambles for his wallet, ears prickling. “Brute.”

Kurogane’s fingers shift over the bar. “Pay it, next time,” he mutters. Fai’s hands turn lax against the leather; stares with eyes wide and mouth frozen as those roughened callouses slip the weathered linen of his cleaning cloth from his shoulder, brush away the droplet left behind by still-wet hair. Kurogane coils the cloth beneath his palm; shifts his weight onto his hands once more. “Maybe you’ll figure out how to make an order, by then.”

Fai forces a swallow down a throat that grates like sandpaper. He reaches for his glass, feigning passivity: downs the rest of its contents in one sip. “Or,” he says, and clears his throat, “ _or_ —you might just be making up creations every time.”

“Say that as if I make drinks for a living,” Kurogane says dryly. He reaches out for the empty glass slid his way: doesn’t bat a lash for the way fingers pale as moonlight stutter like a man shocked at the barest brush of their thumbs, accidental. Golden lashes stumble into a frazzled flutter, doe-eyed and pink beneath the rain-damp ringlets of his fringe. Kurogane swallows.

“I should,” Fai breathes, hand frozen still. “I, um—”

“Should take the T train,” Kurogane finishes, dragging the glass back fully. “ _West_.”

“Oh, I _know_ —” and here frustration jolts to sense: turns the half-drowned man from the likes a star-spirit embodied back into the moss-cloaked hermit he had tumbled in as, wet coat thrown back across his shoulders and cap nestled back upon the wild frays of his hair, “T train, West, I _know_ —give me some damn credit,” and claps his shoes back upon the floorboards, drooping papers nestled back into the bend of his arm like a cursed parcel three weeks too late. “I know, I know, I _know_ —”

“Then _go—_ ”

“ _Okay_!”

And away he does, gruffling all the while, and none the wiser to the bemused snickerings that follow such a bewildering display of public antics, catches his heel on the threshold: trips into a wild scuffling across the doorway to send the shoji crashing shut behind him, shoulders seized to his ears. He sends a mortified look through the wood-paneled window, then, flushed to his crown. The man behind the bar stares between parted fingers as though watching a dog choke on its own tail.

Strung amongst a slow-growing audience of onlookers, Kurogane, neck creeping faintly to an odd shade of red, shakes his head into a plummet of further confusion, hand shooing into a violent flurry.

The idiot walks the wrong way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. Hello. Kurogane as a bartender? _Kurogane as a bartender._ That is it we're good nope goodbye.


	12. loading the gun.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who's ready for some post-Yama _yearning_ with a dash of shameless cigarette porn and flirting, because that is what y'all are _getting_.

Twelve stories beneath the gloss of blue quartz and silicon that paved glass streams between the spires of Piffle’s city center lay a quiet-kept underground: stumbled upon through proxied invitation or thrice-knocked doors in outer-district alleys (or, in Fai’s case, taking the corporate elevator five floors the wrong direction): where the fluorescence hummed pink and evergreen rather than lemondrop-yellow, embers of rolled tobacco puffed teak-oil plumes in place of hearth-warmed cyanide, and the vodka (as he was soon learning) cost 1200 dai, not 750.

Had it been two weeks earlier (two _worlds_ earlier, even), he may have blanched at that price tag as quickly as he had turned pink in placelessness at the sight of velvet-draped shoulders and jeweled necks fleeting through the lowlight. Had it been two weeks earlier—before the wings of their Dragonflies had become as recognizable as _Piffle Princess_ itself, and the prize-money they pocketed heavy enough to pass as trophies in and of themselves—he might have turned on his heel, grating self-mused grumblings for the attendant who had let him descend to the depths without _any_ care for direction, and sought out a bar more _fitting_ , per-say, a man swimming in a coat two sizes too big.

(A coat whose collar still carried the musk of woodsmoke and black cardamom; whose waistline hovered upon the slope of his thighs like the ghosting touch of scarred thumbs, knuckle, palm; whose rightful owner, thin-veiled by a blue-hued haze, sat ten heads down from where he had claimed a space at the bar, 1200 dai be damned.)

Beneath the thrum of the bass, transactions are traded like racing bets. The first swallow stings, bitter and bubbling, and the second warms, and the third, the third never comes—for, by then, Fai has caught sight of him: fingers freezing upon the varnish, rings glinting against the glare. The ice that clatters at the part of his mouth crafts his breath to frost.

Ten heads down, calloused fingers flick the ash from a cigarette half-burned; lift it slow, leather black as night catching on the hollow of his wrist, to take another drag. Even through the blue, those eyes are no less bloody. They linger somewhere at Fai’s neck, steady as a knife’s edge; follow the ripple of pink-lit skin to study the creases of weathered canvas that sweep from his collar, and raise, slowly: from parting mouth to winter-sky eyes: and stay there, with all the still, silent focus of a beast waiting to strike.

(Waiting, _always_ —across the fields, across the clamor of their men; bloodied and brilliant beneath the crescent moon, and _wild_ within the shadows of canvas tied shut. Fai would know the heat of those eyes anywhere, in any being; would shiver in anticipation with every pass of their touch, no matter their intention.)

Dark fingers lift again, parchment shivering and alight. The sharp cut of his cheek hollows further. His elbow nests upon the back of the chair. Smoke flees in silvered rivulets: spills listless and fading.

Fai downs the rest of his drink in two gulps. He’s halfway through a second by the time Kurogane stands, the light rippling upon the mantle of his shoulders in oil-slicked tides—and the moments ( _eons_ ) it takes to thread shut the distance between them last long enough to leave his heart between his teeth. “I didn’t know you smoked,” is all he manages, a touch too loud, once the loom of raven hair and leather sleeve has weaved beside him. His fingers fiddle upon the grain.

“Don’t,” Kurogane huffs, leaning down into the bar. A carved glass, glossed with amber, finds a sharp-set home upon it. “Usually,” he corrects, as an afterthought. His thumb ticks ash free, and his head tilts, lashes flitting down. In the dark, they rim his eyes like coal: craft the auburn of their iris to smoldered flame. “How’d you end up down here?”

“Long story,” laughs Fai. “ _Well_ —short story—what are _you_ doing down here?”

Kurogane snorts. “Think I’d be doing anything else?”

“Yes, _yes_ —but what are you doing _here_?” Fai leans into the bend of his arm, a smile pressed easily into his fingers. Smoke unspools around them, fine as gossamer. “I don’t mean to make assumptions, you know—Kuro-tan can _certainly_ go where he pleases—”

“By that, you mean _walk_ , then yes,” Kurogane starts, words ground to gravel in an instant, and Fai’s grin slips three shades more delighted for it, “but if I have to take one more _fucking_ elevator—don’t you fucking laugh, idiot—I’ll rip the damn cables out, myself.”

“You’ll be _fined_ —”

“Sue me.” Bloody eyes clip down, lethal and lenient at once.

“Taken in for destruction of federal property,” Fai muses on, leaning further into his arm still. Through the padding of their sleeves, their elbows brush. “They’d have you for _months_ , Kuro-pon; at _last_ , we’d be rid of you.”

“Tche— _you’d_ be the reason my ass would get dragged there, in the first place.” The embers alight again, painting a fine glow about them both. Kurogane breathes out, savoring, and silent. His eyes slip down again: grow lost, abruptly, somewhere past Fai’s collarbone. “Couldn’t find clothes of your own?” he mutters, and looks away. The malt of whisky briefly stings Fai’s lungs where it’s lifted, tipped into a swallow clean as water. He mirrors it, measured as he can.

“Well,” Fai begins, eyes tethered to the fog that kisses upon the glass (and cannot, for the life of him, recall ever being so envious of a piece of drinkware). His smile crooks further, a touch impish. “It’s not _my_ fault you left it—”

“With my _things_.”

“You _left_ it.” Through the cool of dark leather, muscle shifts: firm as stone, and weighted, and warm. Fai’s arm presses slow along it, shoulder-to-shoulder. “Kuro-tan can’t expect me to just leave things be, now can he?”

“I _could_ , if you wouldn’t act like a damn brat—” Pink-hued fingertips inching towards embers still-lit only feeds the fires to that fact. Kurogane pulls the cigarette away without sparing a glance; swats his other hand to nudge the weaseling of their touch away. “Too big on you, anyway.”

Fai’s lip twitches. His hand falls back to his jaw: pillows the slant of it. “I like big things,” he says, simply, and grins.

Color rises sudden on sharp ears—a trick of the light, perhaps. Kurogane scoffs, again. “What you _like_ ,” he grates, and the growl of any accusations soon to follow comes as welcome as the dawn: Fai’s lip bitten, hands folding patient upon the polish, “is feeling hidden.”

“ _Ah_ —and yet, Kuro-sama, it’s the strangest thing: this big, scruffy mutt always seems to hunt me out.”

“ _Mutt_.”

“Bear, wolf, ogre,” Fai supplements, lilting like numbers counted off. “I can’t be sure.”

The glass lifts again: copper vanishing, clacked down. “Can’t be sure, huh?” Kurogane shifts his weight again. Fai’s fingers shiver. Whisky and nicotine tickle his temple: settle between his lungs in a sweet-stinging surge. He stares through his fringe, cheeks warm; swallows down the flutter beneath his ribs at the part of that full mouth, too subtle to be called a smirk. “That your way of telling me to track it down, for you?”

Fai clears his throat. “Maybe.” He leans further into his palm, smile flashing wide and white. “But, you see, I’m not sure you can—”

“Huh. And why’s that?”

“Well, it’s _desperately_ fond of its pride, you know—you’d be a fool to catch it in the open. You’d have to go somewhere you’d least expect: strange alleys, sleazy bars—”

The embers alight again: spill into a blue-smoked stream. “Somewhere you’d be, then.”

It takes too much for Fai to play offended, distracted as he is. He finds the frayings of it, eventually. “Oh, I _see_ —saying I have poor taste?”

Kurogane smirks fully. “Maybe.” His eyes trail down, again. In the pink of the glare, they bloom blackish, suns eclipsed, and Fai—

(remembers crescent moons and blood-bitter teeth snarling familiar phrases in a foreign tongue; remembers the gnawing solitude that snared upon a soul devoid of babbling and distraction, language stripped to skeleton-vowels and touch, and touch to tracings, the embers glowing orange through the weave of undyed linen shed from dark skin—)

“ _Maybe_ ,” Fai parrots, smoke tingling warm in his lungs, a sharp rerooting in reality. “Maybe, I’m just waiting.” (And the anticipation can’t be hidden, then—fingers catching upon his glass with all the clumsiness of a boat thrown from its tether, smile small and strange: self-conscious in a way he had abandoned, once, lifetimes ago.)

Kurogane quirks one brow. His mouth twitches. “Mh.” The last drag comes smoothly, the embers extinguished, tucked into the sharp prism of his glass. “Alright, then,” he husks, and up Fai’s eyes raise: a helpless latching, mouth shivered open, stripped to nothing by a look alone. “Let’s get out of here.”

Black and red and pink-glossed glass and tinted varnish cloud Fai’s vision: craft his lungs to ash. “Okay,” he breathes, after a long moment. He feels too warm to think.

“Okay,” echoes Kurogane lowly, cheek creasing again (and in that moment, heart hammering, Fai is sure of nothing at all—nothing save the fact that when this man will tuck a fold of glossed paper beneath the heel of his glass, draw the heat of himself away and beckon with only a glance of embered eyes, turning from the clamor and the crowd into the cool dark of the alley beyond, that Fai will follow; that when listless steps will turn to one heavy hand coiling upon the curve of his hip, pressed flush against the concrete, Fai will breathe in the sting of ash and liquor on his breath with a tremor in his bones: will drink down every drop of sedation left within the heat of his mouth like an addict set on relapse; that when the light touches the sheets, Fai will breathe in the stale sweet of sweat and smoke weaved into the starch: will turn into the branding heat of a hand lax on his back, and know that for now (for this moment alone, and the next, and next)—just for _now_ , this is all that will be.)

A wad of iridescent-gleamed bills are jingled from an inner pocket, nudged beneath the corner of carved glass, heat shifting against Fai’s shoulder. Kurogane stands. His eyes simmer with the sparks of a spell itself.

When he turns, Fai follows.


	13. to have, and to hold.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is somewhat of a conglomeration of several AUs: taking place somewhere in the realm of my Resettled Suwa AU, and borrowing inspiration from the Brothers AU touched on in [4\. lending softer ears to my lungs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22247560/chapters/53132320#workskin). I've had the idea for this in my head for a while, but it took me by storm today. Take it as something treading the line between poetry and fiction—it's a prosey, Tolkien-inspired metaphorical mess: but, by now, you all should know those are the messes I treasure the most.

The elders of old alone recalled a time when the spirits had walked the earth as flesh and blood: when the warmth of their breath drew the curtains from the dawn; when the soils bled elixirs of cellophane and prism-light beneath the weight of their heels, and withered in their wake. Then, the skies sang blue eternal: the nightingales carried the moon's silks on their tails: and the footpaths that weaved high to the manor proper and beyond were wild still. 

In such times, the spirits had been called men—long before the titles of Takeminakata and Yasakatome had claimed them: before their ashes lay enshrined beneath the painted gates of the Honmiya, and wild sage bound in ribbon with the sakaki.

Then, the kami of the wind and tides had been Suwa's ruling eye, and the heavens' consort her tongue. Then, they had stood on the ruins of a homestead time had long since forgotten, the ease of renouncement placed in their hands, and had chosen, instead, reclamation. 

And then, no longer was Suwa a sodden curse to plague the tongues of her beholders. The name glittered, emblazoned, awed. 

From the ashes again stood a province reborn. 

Myth and legend and gossip alike swarmed in the shadows of her Lord and Master's steps, like strays after scraps—and how could they not? For there stood a man to whom Death was only a passing folly; who bore an arm of iron, and eyes of steel, and a talisman sealed by the soul of Owatatsumi himself; who spoke with dragonfire on his breath, and mercy in his silence; who had lived, and vanished, and lived again—the Dragon-Born; Demon-Slayer; the Shinigami of Shirasagi, himself; Master, Excellency; forever Divine Eternal, under the light of the Sun and Moon both.

At his side stood a man of no lesser stature nor superstition, whose own foreign-birthed titles Suwa's people could not have untangled from those strange, slithering vowels if they tried—so, in their place, they had chosen their own: Star-Spirit; Fire-Caster; Kitsune, and Tenshi; Wielder of the Storms and Skies. It came naturally for death to immortalize him as a descendent of the heavens, themselves—for no other explanation could be fathomed for the cloudless sky of his eyes: the threaded moonlight of his hair: the lightning spells of his touch: the sun-dying gold of the haunting, otherworldly beast that lay beneath it all.

They were men only insofar as mortality could, with contested certainty, lay its hand upon them both: but _human_ was hardly a world for it—and the tales, legends, rumors that recounted such battles followed them as much in life as in death.

In death, the Great Dragon was reborn, and the Firebird of the Heavens winged again. The wickeds of Suwa's bloodied legacy was unearthed, resown with plentiful tales of her bounty and blessing—and for five decades of prosperity were the legends of her people reforged and long retold. The names of her Lord and Master were repainted with the brush of divination: the stories of their return broadened into alluring flourish: the name of Suwa herself sanctified.

Countless came on pilgrimages West, generations after the wilds of her hill-paths had grown tame and cobbled. In slow, weaving solitude, or teams of twos, or fives, or twenties, they straggled—up the highlands, through mountains towering and ancient as the imperial seat they laid claim to; past the iron-rust underbrush, and the sun-bleached flax of wheaten tides; over jutting stone, and whistling streams, and valleys endless as the northernmost seas—to the settlement that beckoned among the looming thickets like a snow-silver beacon from the green.

Only upon crossing the wards of a foreign, rain-chilled magick that had stood through war and siege and peace past, and all more since—wards whose barrier rippled through skin and soul like a droplet to still water; whose power no mage of Nihon could touch, could dare attempt to recite any trace of that twisting tongue of ritual and sacrifice bred from the frost—would they know, at hours end, their journey was no more.

Some would stare in wonder upon the silken crests of crimson and indigo that danced beyond the horizon: sneering and skeptical, or smiling in small, exhausted relief. Others fell to their knees and wept.

Many felt nothing, in the rituals that would follow—but would lay the trinkets carried with them in reverence, nonetheless. Prayers and tales and testimonies alike found common homes among the throngs of cloth-wrapped crystal: the shrine's stillness as much a place of comfort as one of confession. But the select few—in whose blood lie a dormant power, or a fate yet declared, or an atonement yet paid—saw, fleetingly, something in the incense's plumes: who walked from the gates with a strange sense of release, and, afterwards, couldn't find the words to voice such a sensation, if one had paid them. And rarer still from them were those that saw it, fully: a glimmer through the smoke: scaled and feathered and shroud in satin; who, from only the corner of their eye, could have _sworn_ to staring into eyes of blood, hair deep and dark as ravens' wings fanning wild across glistening thread, or laying fine as spun gold: a smile curling against skin fair, _so_ fair, that one would think it painted on.

Such glimpses only proved to heighten the legends further—but of all who visited, only three knew them to be true. 

Separately, they came: over months, or years: occasionally beknownst to each other, but never joined—for only in the moment the miko would bow in silent leave, carrying the murmurs of their rites with them, were they truly alone with _them_ : breathless in the presence of those once called Liege and Father.

The third granddaughter of the High Empress would bring with her, always, a hand-lettered bottle of purified sake, for whom the name _Uncle_ was written in blessed ink. Four guards stationed in wait, she would pour a single cup to sip from: bow in voiceless prayer to the man the Moon Priestess of Old had once renamed as her own: and would leave its contents uncovered—knowing, coyly, that the disappearance of its fill would puzzle even the brightest of the kannushi, with every year's eve.

The son of the daughter of the Queen Almighty, Ruler of the Nine Desert Seas—bearded, and bright-eyed, and booming with laughter—would grow the quietest when kneeled before the shrine of his ancestors, for whom blood could not have drawn a thicker bond if it tried. On the first of every April, he would lay a portrait upon the altar. _She's six, now. Ten. Fourteen._

The last of them, who came in intervals unmeasured, stood with time touchless upon him: who the province elders parted ways for in soundless veneration, and those too young to remember stared upon as though witnessing a yokai embodied: who sunk before the flicker of the flames with steadying breath, and blue-fire eyes, and twitching smirk a slow weary peeled away. "Hello, brother," he would breathe. At once, the forests would fall still.

And to them all, there were no fleeting glimpses, or whispered rites: no fanged dragon, or feathered beast: nothing save two men, ancient and ageless, whose voices carried the weight of the moon and oceans both.  To each, and to all, they would smile warmly.  In unison, they would say, _Welcome home_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The folklore referenced here is based on the history of the Suwa Clan and their localized Shinto beliefs, specifically for the Suwa-Taisha (Great Shrine): Takeminakata (or Suwa-Daimyojin; Great Kami of Suwa), god of the Upper Shrine, is historically referenced as a kami of wind, water, agriculture, and/or of hunting/warfare, who is often depicted in the shape of a serpent or dragon; and whose consort, Yasakatome, goddess of the Lower Shrine, is mentioned only in Suwa folklore: her origins and history are disputed, though she has been referenced to have "come down from the heavens."
> 
> Naturally, I saw all this and ran for the hills (though creative liberties were taken). 
> 
> The first two figures mentioned at the end are Amaterasu/Kendappa's and Sakura's descendants, respectively, and the third is a version of the R!Fai introduced in Ch. 4.


End file.
